“It’s our party we can say what we want, it’s our party we can love who we want,
we can kiss who we want, we can see who we want.” Miley Cyrus depicts the ideal
hedonistic life that many crave to live, while Oscar Wilde uses his book “The Picture
of Dorian Gray” as an excellent cautionary tale about the dangers of living this life
with the use of symbols, characterization and imagery.
Oscar Wilde uses the development of the character of Dorian Gray to his advantage
by portraying the drawback of living a lifestyle of hedonism. One of the main
disadvantages of this style of life is losing the people one loves. Wilde reveals this
idea at the beginning of the book with Dorian’s reaction towards Sybil Vane’s horrible
acting. He claims “you used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my
curiosity.”(Wilde, 85) This incident was the first time one saw the selfish and selfcentred behaviour of Dorian Gray and everything from now on in his life depended
on the love for outer beauty. Moreover the harsh tone used by Dorian contrasts to
who he was before his meet with Lord Henry, as Basil stated Dorian had a “simple
and a beautiful nature.”(Wilde, 16) Another loss faced by Dorian after his change
was the murder of Basil Hallward, as Dorian “dug the knife into the great vein that is
behind the ear, crushing the man’s head.”(Wilde, 151) Wilde extends the length of
this sentence, decreasing the pace and intensifying the suspense and fear to provide
an idea of what Dorian had become, a man who destroyed his best friend and
creator. The dark imagery throughout the murder scene forms a gothic tone that
further emphasizes the change in Dorian.
Many religions reject the idea of hedonism on the grounds that God drove the first
two human beings, Adam and Eve out of heaven due to their curiosity of living a life
of maximum pleasure. Oscar Wilde supports this idea since he conveys the second
downside as getting influenced by evil, a major recurring theme in the novel. One of
the greatest influential people for Dorian was Lord Henry, who slowly manipulated
Dorian, changing his beliefs and encouraging him to be proud of his beauty. As Lord
Henry said on their first encounter “Because you have the most marvellous youth,
and youth is the one thing worth having.” (Wilde, 24) This passage highlights the
state of mind of Dorian further on in the novel, thus everything he did was due to this
idea proving Wilde’s opinion on living a life truly based on self-indulgence.
Furthermore, Lord Henry provided Dorian with a special yellow book that he studied
for years and made it his life’s blue print due to its hedonistic and decadent
message. Dorian himself accepted the influence of the book as he said “it is entirely
you fault. That book you send me so fascinated me” (Wilde, 121).
When one seeks refuge within a person, confiding all their secrets, another uses it to
their advantage, which soon resulted in others fearing Dorian. Oscar Wilde describes
this as the third danger of having an extravagant way of life. “It was remarked,
however, that some of those who had been most intimate with him appeared, after a
time, to shun him.” (Wilde, 136) The dark imagery portrayed by the author helps
emphasize the