dawn
Dawny the Book Worm
Administrator
Book Zealot
 Offline
CHAT
Posts: 4054
|
 |
« on: January 13, 2011, 10:12:12 PM » |
|
brought to you by OBS Staffer Annabell
Chapter 20
Characters:
Dorian Gray
Summary
Dorian walks home, admiring the beautiful evening. He overhears someone whispers his name, pointing him out and hates it. He no longer wants anyone to point him out. He was tired of people knowing him. Once he gets home, he finds his servant waiting for him and send him to bed. He muses over the things Lord Henry had said about him earlier. He wonders if Lord Henry is right that no one can change. He longs for his boyhood again and the freedom he had in his boyhood.
He contemplates the portrait he had Basil paint of him, how he wanted to have a token of his youth to always look at it. He picks up the mirror Lord Henry had given him once that has cupids all around it. He stares at himself and remembers words in a letter someone had wrote to him who loved him too much, “The is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.” He continues to stare at himself and suddenly becomes angry. He throws the mirror to the ground and stomps on it, hating his own beauty because his beauty is what had ruined his life.
Dorian decides it’s better not to think of the past since nothing could change what has already been done. James Vane was hidden away in a nameless grave at the churchyard in Selby and everyone would soon get over talking about Basil’s disappearance. Alan Campbell’s suicide was his own fault not Dorian’s so he doesn’t worry about it. What troubles him still is the murder of Basil. He had committed the horrible act because he could not forgive Basil for painting the portrait of him in such beauty.
Dorian wants a new life and believes he has already start down the path to a better life since he spared the innocent girl at the country inn from being seduced by him. Dorian starts to think about the painting and wonders if the painting has changed now that he is. He decides to go and look. Once he takes out the paiting, the smile vanishes from his face. The painting still looks the same but Dorian thinks much worse, “He could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite.” He lets out a cry pf pain and indignation. He thought he had changed and the portrait would finally reflect that but nothing has changed. Dorian realizes he has been nothing more but vain and a hypocrite and he only spared the innocent girl from being seduce out of curiosity and vanity.
Dorian decides he will destroy the painting, it had always haunted him and filled him with terror. He looks around and spots the knife had killed Basil with and stabs the picture.
A horrible cry, full of agony is heard followed by a loud crash. The servants get scared and wake up to investigate what has happened but the room is locked. Two gentleman who were walking by the house hear the horrible cry and retrieve the constable. The constable knocks on the door but no one answers. The servant Francis, after an hour, gets the coachman and one of the footman. They go upstairs and knock but get no reply. They call out but still get no reply. They try to force the door open but that doesn’t work. They climb onto the roof and drop onto the balcony and get into Dorian’s room through the windows. Once inside they find a beautiful portrait hanging on the wall of their master in his wondrous youth and lying on the floor is a dead man who has a knife in his chest. He is old, wrinkled and withered. They don’t recognize the old man until they examine his rings and realize he is Dorian Gray.
Favorite Quotes:
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold.
The curves of your lips rewrite history.” ~Narrator
“He loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on
the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel.
It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth
that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life
might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him
but a mask, his youth but a mockery.” ~Narrator
“Through vanity he had spared her.
In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's
sake he had tried the denial of self.” ~Narrator
Questions
What are your over all thoughts about the book?
|
Author