The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde's dark novel The Picture of Dorian Gray provides insight into the flipping quarter that is human nature.  The story's greatest strength, without a doubt, is its component of artistic vision and idea.  Wilde takes the reader on a wild ride through the corroding mind of an externally beautiful boy, but internally withering remnants of a soul.  While the prose demonstrates upmost thought and intellect through floral language, Dorian's transformation occurs swiftly.  What is most disturbing about the text is not Dorian's steep downward spiral towards debauchery and his eventual demise, but rather Wilde's disturbing revelations about human nature.  The effects of Wilde's tale are long-lasting: the reader will long after contemplate such themes as the power of influence, the fleeting but treasured natures of youthful purity and beauty, the dichotomy of soul and body, and several others.  Religious parallels hinted at by Wilde and easily established by the reader keep the text connected to the literary canon.  One can easily draw from the text the Genesis story in which Lord Henry is the equivalent to the snake, Dorian portrays Adam, and knowledge remains the constant.  There is also the relation between Dorian and Jesus: Dorian must sacrifice himself for humanity, or at least Lord Henry's study of it, while the latter puts his G-d complex into dangerous motion.  The ability to form connections to the past literary tradition  demonstrates Wilde's complex artistic vision and his ability to keep the reader engaged for much beyond mere words typed onto a page.  I chose The Picture of Dorian Gray not for its unpredictability in plot as I had already known--along with the rest of the literate world--how the text ends plot-wise, but rather for its unpredictability in subject and lessons.  Wilde twists and turns on a trail of didacticism and thus is how he keeps his reader engaged.  The plot itself when one breaks it down, is actually relatively simple.  The ideas and themes, however, not quite.  Overall, Wilde succeeds in doing what every single author attempts to accomplish: even long after reading the final chapter and putting the book back onto the shelf, the reader never really stops finishing the text as he or she continues to contemplate the text for, well, just about eternity.