Just Finished Reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

Yesterday I referred to English writer Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray when I compared the worsening appearance of the title character in his portrait to the weather maps progressively showing the projected path of very dangerous Hurricane Matthew edging more and more into my state of Florida.  But Wilde was writing about something quite different from the weather: what is a good life well spent? Virtuous living while caring for others or pursuing one's own hedonistic inclinations to their fullest without regard to the harm it can do?  Along with that is another question: does one's beauty in itself denote goodness...and if not, why are the beautiful and handsome exalted in our world while the ugly vilified?

There are three central characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray: the painter Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton, and Gray himself.  The beginning sets the stage for the rest of the book as Basil shows Lord Henry the portraits he has painted of Dorian Gray, a very handsome young man whose appearance captivates the artist.  Basil introduces the two to each other, and Lord Henry almost immediately sets out to indoctrinate the relatively innocent, young Dorian with his own worldview of hedonism, his equation of beauty with goodness, and that experiences are justified in themselves regardless of their effects.  Dorian is taken up with both "Harry's" message and his friendship and they end up shutting out the increasingly concerned Basil from their company.  But before that happens, Dorian makes a wish: may he always stay young and beautiful and that any changes to himself instead appear on the final portrait that Basil has made for him...

No, I am not going to lay down the plot of this book...you just might want to look into it to see what happens.  But it's pretty common knowledge...so I don't think I'm giving anything away... that whenever Dorian Gray does something evil, it is reflected in a change in his picture, which he owns and eventually (and understandably) decides to hide away from others.  Yet Dorian remains through the years as youthful and unblemished as when Basil painted his picture for him.  This does not mean that the lifestyle he lives at the expense of others doesn't carry its own negative consequences.  The general society around him begins to shun him for his profligate behavior and the harm he has done through it to many.  And there is one individual dedicated to killing Dorian in revenge...although he knows him neither by name nor appearance...

The ending to The Picture of Dorian Gray was right on target and would have been perfect as the conclusion to a Night Gallery or Twilight Zone episode.  But of course, it was stories like this one written by Oscar Wilde that inspired the genre that these two great television series presented, as well as renown writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.  And Wilde himself may have derived this kind of "gothic horror"/psychological fiction from Edgar Allen Poe...but I'm just speculating.  I recommend this novel, but be forewarned that it can delve into some seriously abstract philosophical ramblings...