The Picture of Dorian Grey

The story is about a young man, Dorian Grey, who is the inspiration of a painter named Basil Hallward. Dorian is completely innocent both of his beauty and of the world until he meet Basil’s friend Lord Henry Wotton. He opens his eyes to the nature of his own beauty and advices him to enjoy life. When the portrait is complete, Dorian whishes that the painting would grow old, and not him. His wish is granted. After he leaves Basil’s studio, he decides to live his life as a pleasure-seeker with no regard for conventional morality. He falls in love with Sibyl Vane, but his love proves to be as shallow as he is. When he breaks Sibyl’s heart and drives her to suicide, Dorian notices the first change in his portrait—evidence that his portrait is showing the effects of age and experience while his body remains ever youthful. After a while, the painting fills him with fear and locked it up in an old schoolroom in his house. Dorian finds a certain joy, over the next years, in committing sinful or pleasurable deeds and watching the painting change and become old and ugly while he loses none of his beauty or youth. It is not until the end of the book that he realizes what he had done and decides to change. He decides that from this time on, he will be good; and to do this, he must destroy the portrait. He stabs it.But when the servants enter they see the portrait as it was when it was new, and a horrible, old, ugly man lying dead on the floor.
I chose this book for two reasons. First, because I wanted to show what people is capable of in order to be young and beautiful as long as possible. Second, because I wanted to advise people to be real and to accept and respect themselves and their bodies and never to change to fix in an ideal and unreal stereotype.

Sun