The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The picture of Dorian Gray presents a snapshot of a time of British nobility and opulence, well captured and obviously admired by Oscar Wilde's disposition. In the novel the recklessness, vanity, and weakness of Dorian Gray is captured by his portrait which ages and suffers for his conscious. The portrait indeed contains his soul and thus the reflection of it torments Dorian who has not lived a life of virtue. The story present a clear picture that people do have souls and that standing up for what is right and noble is food to keep the soul young always.

This book is a classic, the writing impeccable, the thoughts fantastical.

"Often... he would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and ageing face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead, or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age"