Novel Review - Elements of Drama of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray Novel

1. Theme

The theme of this story is about a beautiful young man who fell in love with his own beauty.

2. Main Characters

· Dorian Gray
· Lord Henry Wotton
· Basil Halward
· Sybil Vane

3. Setting

· Setting of place: London
· Setting of time: year is not mentioned

4. Summary of the story (plot)

This story tells about a beautiful young man named Dorian Gray who was painted by an artist named Basil Hallward, he painted it with love and he thought if an artist felt strongly about a portrait, it became a portrait of himself and it showed his own feeling. Basil’s friend, Lord Henry Wotton suggested him to exhibit Dorian’s portrait, but he didn’t want to because he was afraid it showed the secret of his heart.

Lord Henry wanted to meet Dorian but Basil didn’t want him to because he worried that Harry would change and influence Dorian, Dorian is a good person and still young.

When Harry met Dorian, he talked about how important Dorian’s wonderful face is. Slowly he started to change his mind. After Basil finished the Dorian’s portrait, he showed it to Dorian, for a moment he felt happy to see the beautiful face in front of him. But then he remembered Harry’s words. He worried about growing old and time will steal his beauty from him. He suddenly cried and wished that he could always stay young and that the picture could grow old. However he took that portrait.

Dorian preferred to go with Harry than Basil, and Harry kept teaching him to enjoy every pleasure in life. One day Dorian felt in love with an actress in theatre named Sybil Vane. He already wanted to marry her. Then he, Dorian, and Harry watched Sybil’s acting in theatre but Sybil wasn’t good, everybody got bored. Dorian didn’t love her anymore because he loved her for her art. He broke her heart, and she killed herself at the theatre. But he didn’t felt sorry about that.

And so the years passed, the face of Dorian Gray kept being wonderful but picture of him grew older every year, the terrible face showed the dark secrets of his life. The stories about him became worse, he was sometimes away for several days; he was seen fighting with foreign sailors in bars; and he was friendly with thieves.

One day Dorian showed the portrait of himself to Basil, Basil saw the terrible face in the portrait, an evil and unlovely face. Dorian explained about that all, how he could be still young but the portrait got old because of his wish. Because Basil had known his secret, he killed him and asked a scientist named Alan Campbell to destroy the dead body of Basil.

Then he started to realize how bad he was, he wanted to change his life, he would live a better life and he hoped the picture will become less ugly. But when he saw the picture, there was no change, the face in the picture was still terrible. He wanted to destroy it, he picked a knife and dug into the picture. He made a terrible cry. His servants came to him and saw a fine portrait of the young Dorian Gray, in all his wonderful youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, with a knife in his heart. His face was old and ugly and yellow with disease. He was the real Dorian Gray.

5. Moral Message

It shows us that beauty is not the only important thing in life, the inner beauty is the most important. We cannot cut the link between our inside and our outside.

Copyright (c) Ahmad Alim Aziz

Novel Review - Elements of Drama of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray Novel