The picture of Dorian Grey is a great masterpiece novel by Oscar Wild, which I had my hands on when I was in school. I loved the character of Dorian Grey so much, that when he destroyed his valuable picture and himself at the end, it left and empty sadness, which I can still remember. Is it the sad truth about all of us pictured here by #OscarWild? If it is not Hedonism, which we should follow, then what is it? Is it Abstinence?
Let me give you a background to the novel, to the reader, who has read the novel a long time ago. So, you can follow the thought process. For others, who are fresh with memory, you can skip the plot.
Story:
It is a story of a young man named Dorian Gray, whose portrait was painted by artist Basil Hallward. Dorian becomes obsessed with his own beauty and youth and wishes that he could remain young forever, while the #portrait ages in his place. As Dorian indulges in a life of disinhibited pleasures, he becomes increasingly cruel and corrupt, although he doesn't represent it from outside, his picture shows his horrible self, by changing its appearance over time. And finally, after years, Dorian decides to restore the picture but, ending up his own life in doing so...
Message:
What is the message Oscar Wild wanted to give us? We can argue that he was just telling a story and there is no message in it. In which case we should stop arguing and thinking about the novel. But that is not our nature. Hence, we will look at Dorians' in our society and within ourselves.
It is true that Pleasure, whether we like it or not, controls our lives. Remember when we cried asking for more candy when we were little? From that time onwards we were in a never-ending struggle to keep a steady income, to travel, to feel the pleasure of food and wine, and relationships. How can we be so sure, when we are greedy, when we act angry, that our picture is not painted with our actions? Is it what Mr. Wild is suggesting? That we all have a picture of our own drawn somewhere hidden in an empty room, re-painted with our every action?
If it is not #hedonism (Pleasure determines what we should or not do) we should follow, Is it the opposite? Is it the abstinence from pleasures that we should follow? If so, to what extent should we follow that? Can we make our picture better if we donate all our wealth to the poor and live just with minimal necessary things needed for living. Should we really buy an expensive car, even if we had plenty of money to do, even after donating. Or should we avoid cars and use public transport instead, and is there a limit for being good?
There are some insights for this question, we can get from the famous argument, which was put forward by Peter Singer in 1971, some 80 years after the publication of the Picture of Dorian Grey. In his essay "Famine Affluence and Morality" he argues that affluent people are morally obliged far more to donate resources to humanitarian deeds than what is considered normal. So, if you buy and expensive car instead of a normal one which is obviously needed for transport, you are helping to the death of some children somewhere in the world by not donating that money which we could have saved. So, we make our pictures dirtier by nature even something simple as not donating money. (Singer’s ‘famine relief argument’ and vegans.)
Boundary between traditional good and evil is stretched nowadays more than ever when, bad is represented as good in disguise and even accepted by the society as norm. So we can question as is there a boundary at all. As an example, it is bad to watch someone's hands to be chopped in ISIS video- it is snuff, but it is not bad to watch a SAW movie. Latter is more accepted by the society but represent the same, killing someone for some reason. Horror is a genre on its own. Does it mean our insides get rotten, when we appear doing good from outside, even when is not obvious?
So, it is true individually up to us to do whatever we desire with our resources. But I think the message from Oscar Wild is very clear that we should go back to our Attic from time to time and look at our picture and adjust our course of action before it becomes uncorrectable.
Thank you for reading "Picture of Dorian Grey- what is the message"
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