From the Bookshelf of EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club…

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

Start date: April 1, 2025

Finish date: April 30, 2025

Discussion: CLASSICS READS

Why we're reading this: April 2025 - Bookshelf Catch-Up
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CLASSICS READS

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Jan 05, 2020 Rianto Dermawan rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

"If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old ! For this - for this - I would give everything !"

This is about a man of hedonist, the temptation of human to love the beauty of appearance , whilst the invisible thing inside human which have more value unseen, not considered. The thing that still alive in present world where technology enable people who willing to become known, performed, good looking, and by themselves create their own picture in every place "If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old ! For this - for this - I would give everything !"

This is about a man of hedonist, the temptation of human to love the beauty of appearance , whilst the invisible thing inside human which have more value unseen, not considered. The thing that still alive in present world where technology enable people who willing to become known, performed, good looking, and by themselves create their own picture in every place in this planet, every second, every moment. Oscar Wilde write this novel and published in year 1890, theme about loving and indulging the beauty superficially as thought when picture of portrait can only be painted on canvas.

Dorian Gray is a young man, extraordinary personal beauty but immature , who become a model for the portrait picture painted by Basil Hallward.
And there is Lord Henry, aristocrat , a friend of the artist who become influencer , the mentor for Dorian. But the teacher just trying experimental as likely a psychological science test to experience how was soul and body. Are they , spirit and matter, two of separation or union.
It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at scientific analysis of the passion, and certainly Dorian Gray was subject made to his hand.
He play to wander no matter how it all ended or it was destine to end.

It has slight similarity in a way of story in Charles Dickens' Great Expectation, where an old woman trying to influence the soul of a young girl . Though in this book a noble man trying to poison the soul of young Dorian Gray to get rid temptation of loving because it grows sick longing for the things.

Chapter IX is tedious part in reading the book, and is farfetched. Oscar Wilde wrote too much to tell about hedonistic of nobles people in Europe and elsewhere. It was like reading a textbook about theory of things. About abundant wealth and luxury of houses, clothes, food, diamonds, jewelry, gemstones, pursued and displayed by richest people . Even to die, they also need to be decorated with luxury to be seen. It's like a separate part of the whole story of this book. It is possible for this chapter to be omitted without disrupting storyline. The following chapter the story is back to the theme, ascending the grit to read until the end.

Position and wealth are not everything. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's faces. It cannot be concealed ...more

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