Dîrmină Oana Diana

An III, Grupa 2

The switch of beauty

Reading The picture of Dorian Gray twice, I realized that the text is really profound, with hidden
and well-defined signs. The text speaks about the power of beauty and perfect things. Gray is a
man who embodies the beauty, he lives a life of pure pleasure, free from moralizing, and becomes
interested only in that wich is beautiful.

In this literary text, I have noticed that the whole text is the source that helped me to understand
the meanings of the living and the beauty of the main character. Also, the text showed me the
initial beauty and innocence of Dorian that changes during the novel into the ugliness of the soul.
Moreover, Oscar Wilde's text does not use the mind as a key in deciphering it, but allows the text
to access the mind so that it develops new meanings, so we can realize that Dorian and his portrait
will switch identities and the hero decides to live his life as a work of art. His first decision is taken
because he is jelous of everything whose beauty does not die.

The mind is the only one that allows access to the new imaginations, to a new life, to a new truth,
but Dorian does not want ,,to see things as they really are “. Dorian wants to take advantage of life
and youth and that's why he says in the text :,,Live!Live thr wonderful life that is in you!Let
nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations.”

In the text, the painting symbolizes only a painting in the mind of man, but rightly, the text
reveals its depth, reveals it more thoroughly, giving it its role, that of taking the appearance of
Dorian Gray and as time passes, the young man”s beauty remains uddiminished while the picture
gradually changes. All the time,one thing is perfect,namely, Dorian , that is perfect on the
outside, but is corrupt on the inside and this thing is visible throughout the text. The painting,
created by Basil, is the key of the whole text, as it is transformed by its own model, Dorian who
sees that his portrait is still loathsome , he experiences his desire to destroy it with the same knife
that killed the painter. This is an example in which the text unlocks sensation and meaning in the
mind. So, the bogus Dorian attacks the true Dorian,only to kill the former,demonstrating that he is
unable to derive pleasure for his sins.

All in all, it seems that the whole text works with images and whishes of Dorian that are in relation
with beauty"s art. This text is a masterwork, a key of succes which create senzations of extistence,
beauty and for that, Dorian fears that he has put too much of himself into the work. But in the
end of the novel appears the sensation of crime , because Dorian killed all that created him :,,As it
had killed the painter,so it would kill the painter”s work,and all that meant.It would kill the past,
and when that was dead he would be free”(Chapter 20).