The Picture Of Dorian Gray Analysis

In the story “The Picture of Dorian Gray” has many interpretation of the meaning of art and responsibility of an artist. For Basil Hallward art should only represent beauty and the artist should only be the bridge allowing people to see the beauty of the world. “An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.” (Page 68) Yet, Dorian Gray was mostly influenced by Lord Henry philosophy and principles on the art of life. For Lord Henry there is no distinction between moral and immoral acts, only between those that increase or decrease one’s happiness. “I believe that if one man were to live his life out full and completely, were to give form to every felling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream, - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal, …show more content…
“There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history that faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit quietly and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared of the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are,- my fame, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks,- we will all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.” (Page 6 &