Free Essays on Picture of Dorian Gray: Dorian as Faust :: Picture Dorian Gray Essays

Dorian as Faust in The Picture of Dorian Gray   The Picture of Dorian Gray is a rich story which can be viewed by means of many literary and cultural lenses. Oscar Wilde himself purposefully filled his refreshing with a great many direct and indirect allusions to the literary culture of his times, so it seems appropriate to look back at his story - both the novel and the 1945 film version - in this way. In many ways, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a retelling of the Faust story. A temptation is placed before Dorian, as with Faust, and he falls for it--offering up his soul to get it. In fact, iodine of Fausts principal wishes is also to remain young. Faust and Dorian also each produce a young woman, then lead her to her death, as well as leading the womans brother (Valentine in Faust and James Vale in Dorian Gray to die in attempting revenge for his sister. It is also a Doppelganger story, desire Adelbert Chamissos Peter Schlemihl (in which Peter foolishly sells his shad ow) and even more worry Edgar A. Poes William Wilson (in which the bank clerk is tormented by a schoolchum who looks and sounds exactly like him, and which ends much like Dorian Gray, with its more sinister overtones. Dorian Gray has a base of eternal youth, bought at the price of ones soul, and continued through the destruction of others, in common with vampires as well. And, of course, Dorian Gray has to be run in the minds eye against the backdrop of Oscar Wildes life, particularly his affair with the young aristocrat, Lord Alfred Douglas, which at long last landed Wilde in jail for sodomy, and pretty much ended his career. on these lines, the life of Oscar Wilde and his novel, Dorian Gray can also be compared to that of rocknroll star Freddy Mercury of Queen and their song, Bohemian Rhapsody. Here we cook Oscar Wilde, fun-loving, witty, cynical, indulgent kind of guy, undone by his lesbian liaison with Lord Alfred Douglas, languishing in jail for sodomy. A few years pre vious to this sad modus operandi of events, he writes The Picture of Dorian Gray--about a decadent, immoral murderer, who also has homosexual relations (with various young men who die, become drug addicts, swear suicide, etc.), and who dies a horrible and disfiguring death due to his evil ways. Now, we also have Freddy Mercury, who lived a flamboyant and decadent lifestyle as a sexually ambiguous rock star.