2013년 9월 24일 화요일

Dorian, The Flower Bud


At the beginning of the novel, Dorian is portrayed as a beautiful individual. Basil inadvertently introduces Dorian to Lord Henry and praises Dorian for his charming beauty. As Basil puts it, Dorian "has a simple and a beautiful nature." This implies that Dorian is in the state of pure beauty because he is not influenced by anyone. After Basil explains Dorian's nature, he demands Lord Henry to neither spoil him nor influence him, saying that "your influence would be bad." Basil's words act as a foreboding; they suggest that Dorian will be influenced by Lord Henry and lose his pure beauty.

Once a purely beautiful individual, Dorian Gray undergoes serious change in his character. When Lord Henry tells his view of the world, Dorian is initially perplexed. He says that Henry's words bewilder him, but this bewilderment turns out to tackle his "secret chord that had never been touched before." After going through this critical stage, contrary to his initial perplexity, Dorian gets completely absorbed into Henry's words. He listens to Lord Henry's praise of youth with wondering, open eyes. Eventually, "the sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation," and Henry's magical words, different from Basil Hallward's compliments, somewhat influence his nature. Quickly Dorian embodies Henry's view on the world when he talks about talking during music to Lady Henry; she comments that his view is "Harry's view." Not only having the same perspective, Dorian "does everything that you[Lord Henry] say," putting Henry's words into action. Although Dorian is sometimes bothered by Henry's views, he develops a strong passion for sensation and pleasure, which is fundamentally similar to that of Lord Henry.

The pleasure-chasing Dorian experiences his initial stage of moral decline when he treats Sibyl with extreme callousness. Dorian first falls in love with Sibyl because he thinks that she is a fascinating actor. His love towards her is rather pure; Dorian is so fascinated that he follows Sibyl wherever she is on stage and is ready to totally devote himself to her. However, despite his mad love towards Sibyl, he coldly treats her when he is disappointed at her low quality acting. When Sibyl says that she could not act well because she was in love with him, Dorian coldly says that he would not see her again because she disappointed him. His cold action is fundamentally different from his past pleasure-seeking actions, such as enjoying the pleasant smell of flowers, in that his pleasure requires the sacrifice of others. When Dorian treats Sibyl with such coldness, he does not treat her as a human being anymore; for Dorian, Sibyl is just a pleasure-giving actor, so if she cannot act well, she must be harshly treated. The devastating impact of Dorian's words is clearly shown when Sibyl commits suicide, which indicates that Dorian's pleasure-seeking activity resulted in an extreme form of sacrifice. Because Dorian's action of harshly treating Sibyl is different from previous actions, the portrait of Dorian starts to show his moral decline by changing cruelly, acting as "the visible emblem of conscience." Despite Dorian's temporary return to his pure love, Dorian becomes more susceptible to Henry's words after experiencing such moral decline.

Apparently, the change of Dorian is attributed to Lord Henry, who notices that Dorian changes and is happy to influence him. However, Lord Henry is not the complete culprit of changing Dorian. Henry thinks that Dorian's change is caused because "his nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame." This suggests that although Lord Henry significantly influences Dorian, Dorian's change can be attributed to his initial nature. This claim is partially true because Dorian epitomizes pure beauty, which is in itself susceptible and powerful. His pure beauty is susceptible to outside influences because it is pure, and it is powerful because it is capable of enthralling others. Because Dorian already possessed such beauty, Lord Henry's words strongly triggered him to become passionate in search for pleasure. Dorian's pure nature contained immense amount of power, which could be used in a good way or the opposite. Henry's words provided the initial direction of change of Dorian's pure beauty. Because such initial direction was hedonistic, Dorian naturally transformed into a hedonistic figure; the changing process involved severe events because Dorian started with great power embedded in his beauty.

To extend Lord Henry's metaphor on Dorian's nature, Dorian started as a flower bud, extremely beautiful and pure. The bud had to open when influenced by an outside force. Unfortunately, the influence was Lord Henry, a pleasure-seeking upper class. The love for plain pleasure and beauty smeared into the bud and it bloomed. The resulting flower was hedonistic, very similar to Lord Henry, but far more devastating because the flower bud had so much power. Eventually, the flower miserably fell into the soil of decadence, loss of beauty, and death.

댓글 1개:

  1. Well written, and thoroughly explored, and I really like your last paragraph. However, it wasn't until I reached the last paragraph that I began to piece together the direction and aim you had in mind. Your title indicates the flowering theme, but it would be beneficial to your reader if you stated the purpose of your analysis more clearly in the form of a question or a claim, rather than what seems to be an unpointed observation in the first paragraph. Basically, make sure your claim/question rings clearly, and keep the thread fresh and relevant in every paragraph. It is almost there, but not quite pronounced enough (perhaps too heavily padded in some paragraphs, your direction loses some momentum).

    I like your creative approach the flowering nature of Dorian's character, and who is "to blame" is an interesting question. One thing we can consider about Dorian is that he has had a rough past with little parental love or guidance. He's a "tabula rasa" in sense, but we can assume that he is predispositioned to a shallow understanding of love and morality. And in those first pages of the book, do we like him as he cries in front of his own portrait? Not really.

    Anyways, good stuff, but I'd like you to write less and write more pointedly in future work. It will help you.

    답글삭제

Thanks for commenting!