Word Choice

 In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde shows that Dorian’s self-realization prompts his slow descent into sin. The portrait becomes a major symbol to guide readers through this shift in Dorian’s character. When Dorian first sees his portrait, he realizes how beautiful he truly is. All of Basil and Henry’s ravings about his beauty finally have an expression on canvas and he comes to realize himself for the first time. In response, he becomes a Narcissus who is completely obsessed with his looks and wishes that his portrait would bear the weight of age while he might remain young. In this moment, Dorian’s self-realization about his beauty prompts him to make desperate appeals for a way to hold onto his beauty as the core of his Self. This goes so far as making a (albeit unconscious) deal with the devil. This, however, is the first moment of self-realization and is not his full descent into sin. At this point, the portrait symbolizes his innocence and Basil’s soul—his love for Dorian—more than anything. After breaking Sybil’s heart and her resultant death, Dorian, however, has another moment of self-realization through the portrait. This time, he sees a touch of cruelty in his portrait’s lip, a parallel to the cruel sneer he wore himself when he told Sybil he no longer loves her. While initially he sees this as a moment of conscience, after speaking with Henry Dorian finds a strange pleasure in seeing the corruption of his portrait. He claims it would become for him “the most magic of mirrors” and show the slow descent of his soul into sin. The portrait as a symbol is key in this moment because it is looking at the changes in his portrait as a reflection of his soul that encourages Dorian to seek a life of sin and enjoyment, in part because he wants to see the degrading of his soul as his body stays beautiful. Without the portrait, Dorian’s beautiful body and corrupt soul become almost meaningless because he does not see the corruption reflected back at him. He would not be able to take the same pleasure in experiencing the change in who he is.

In the “Ainulindale,” J. R. R. Tolkien uses his creation myth to demonstrate that evil is a perversion of good and does not exist on its own. To demonstrate this idea, Tolkien uses the imagery of music to highlight how Melkor (an agent of evil) causes chaos and diverts from the original plan of Ilúvatar (the supreme being tied with goodness). The “Ainulindale” begins in song as Ilúvatar asks his minor gods, like Melkor and Manwë, to create a great music based on a theme that he presented to them. This is the music of creation and represents all that will ever be in creation. Over time, however, Melkor decides to present his own theme, separate from that of Ilúvatar. In this decision, we already see Tolkien’s claim that evil is just a perversion of good. If evil could exist by itself, Melkor would be able to create anything. Yet, he chooses to create music. It is a different song than Ilúvatar’s, but it is still music, as if he does not have the creativity to see beyond that form. He can only modify something that already exists. As he develops his “new” theme, the imagery of music continues to emphasize that evil is merely a perversion of good and not something that can exist by itself. Melkor’s theme creates discord and dissonance in the song of Ilúvatar, and others begin to adapt their song to the theme of Melkor. Implied in Tolkien’s imagery is that evil has the power to spread, but it cannot spread beyond what already exists. It can only corrupt what was once good. To continue with his imagery, there are still the same number of musicians in the orchestra, some are just playing a different song now. Moreover, we can only understand this song as discordant in relationship with the musicians that are still playing Ilúvatar’s theme. In that sense, we can only understand the nature of evil—or that something is evil—if we have the context of goodness through which to understand it. Tolkien effectively develops this complex theology of good and evil through the imagery of music to demonstrate how the two forces relate to one another.

Even though their first welcome is unpleasant, Peynado reaffirms that this is still home for the flyers. To demonstrate this, she uses words that imply a familiarity with the space, even as the flyers approach it with renewed wonder. From lines 58–63, the flyers show their children around their old home, showing them the “flamboyán trees” and the “glimmering pebbles under waterfalls.” Peynado not only describes trees in a park here, but her diction emphasizes that it is a specific type of tree: the flamboyán. These are likely trees that their children have never seen before, and while Peynado could have described the color of the leaves or the arch of the branches, the use of a specific name reveals that these are trees the narrator is intimately familiar with, drawing on a name that is as familiar as “oak” or “maple” may be to people who grew up in North America. The familiarity of the species name for the tree reminds us that this was once the narrator’s home. Yet, as they have been away, they are returning to this world with a newfound wonder. Over time, home becomes familiar with us. We see the same trees and landmarks and they can lose some of their wonder. The narrator here though sees waterfalls and can focus on the “glimmering pebbles” underneath. The use of “glimmering” in this instance emphasizes that the narrator is finding a wonder in those landmarks again because they can appreciate something as small as the small twinkle of sunlight off the water covering the pebbles. Unlike earlier in the story where being away and changing has meant they struggle to fit in with their neighbors as they once did, in relation to the natural world, the change the narrator has experienced since being away means they can appreciate their home in new ways. They come back to something as intimate as a “flamboyán tree”—with all the familiarity such a name implies—but see wonder in that natural world again, able to notice the tiny glimmers off a pebble in a waterfall.

Oscar Wilde often claimed that any sin people find in Dorian Gray, they brought themselves and cautions readers to go too deep beneath the surface of his own writing. To achieve these ends, Wilde obscures information about both Dorian’s beauty and his corrupted portrait. When Basil first sees Dorian’s portrait seventeen years after he first painted it, he is shocked by the thinning hair and sodden eyes, but the principle elements of Wilde’s description are the horror, disgust, and loathing that Basil has for the picture. If this portrait truly reflects all of Dorian’s sins, that disgust is in more disgust at the many foul actions Dorian has committed during his life than the fact that his hair is not as full as it once was. Yet, Wilde does not give us any indication of what those sins might be. There is no sign that he has been an opium addict, that he has slept around, or any other sins that we might imagine. There is only a feeling of disgust on Basil’s part, and so all the reader can truly know about Dorian is that his actions have been horrible and loathsome. Ultimately, this obscured detail creates a vacuum in which people are left to fill in their own ideas on who Dorian is and what he has done. As a result, they almost have to read deeper than the surface of Wilde’s only novel or risk leaving unsatisfied with Dorian’s fate. The beauty of this twist reinforces Wilde’s theory of art, that art’s only purpose is to be art and that any meaning one finds there ultimately reflects oneself rather than something in the art itself. Any moral meanings one found in Dorian are a complete reflection of what we as readers expected to find there.

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