Why does basil try to destroy the canvas

Ed Cohen even goes as far to assume that Basil tries to resolve his emotional crisis by expressing his feelings of desire in the portrait EC He clarifies that it would reveal his secret and thus must not be shown to the public.

If that is the case then the portrait would have no deeper value to anyone but to the artist :MS quotes Aubrey Beardsley himself WM Basil fails as an artist when he faces real life. Only in the last conversation with Dorian, when the painter is forced to look at Dorian's soul in the picture, he realises that he has lived with an illusion all along. Since he met Dorian, Basil only saw what he wanted to see in him WM One might argue that he does the mistake of imitating life - Dorian - with his art, when in fact it should be the other way around KB [1].

By loosing his only source of artistic inspiration he fails as an artist and dies at the hands of his former muse. There are two transpositions of life and art taking place in The Picture of Dorian Gray. The first one happens in the moment in which the portrait is being finished. The artist perpetuates this new facial expression on the canvas and therefore unintentionally captures the most fateful seconds in Dorian's life. To live this lifestyle means in Dorian's case to live life as if it was an artwork.

He only seeks for sensual fulfilment and momentary pleasures, without caring about any consequences because they would leave no marks on his body. For this reason, Basil cannot believe the rumours about Dorian until he sees the young man's soul - his portrait.

But not only the young man turns into an artwork. The artwork also becomes vivid. After some time Dorian recognises first changes in the portrait DG I would give my soul for that! He did end up giving his soul to stay young. He gave his soul, because he no longer felt sadness, grief, guilt, or remorse in the way every other person felt them. He felt only a fraction of each of these emotions, because the full brunt of the emotions were put upon the picture. He did remain young and free from the ill effects of life, but in the end he paid for it with his life.

She wanted her brother to see Dorian, but he looked too late. James Vane is a bit jealous of his sister's new relationship and he is very skeptical of this man in her life.

He does not believe he is the wonderful man she thinks he is. So he warns her, that Dorian had better treat her well or he will suffer the consequences. The consequence being death by James' hand. Sibyl does not take her sixteen year old brother's threat seriously, but she should have.

After Sibyl takes her own life, because of the ending of her and Dorian relationship, James decides to follow through on his threat.

When Aunt Agatha sits down to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people. Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him. Gray—far too charming. The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready.

Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked you to go away? Besides, I want you to tell me why I should not go in for philanthropy. It is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it.

But I certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You have often told me that you liked your sitters to have some one to chat to. Hallward bit his lip. Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves.

I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans. Good-bye, Mr. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. Write to me when you are coming. I should be sorry to miss you. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay. I insist upon it. I beg you to stay. The painter laughed. Sit down again, Harry. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself.

Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast.

And he had such a beautiful voice. As bad as Basil says? All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed.

The aim of life is self-development. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked.

Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us.

But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.

It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think. For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him.

Yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute.

Was there anything so real as words? Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it? With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. I would pick Sybil and Basil. They both live in art instead of life until they meet and fall in love with Dorian, they both die because of Dorian, they are both innocent.

I think from the university. In theory, they were friends, Basil paternalized over him a little, Dorian was also a great muse of his, and he was secretly pining for Dorian. Dorian was bored of his conservative morality, especially after befriending Henry. There is also an allusion to the Garden of Eden near the beginning with the three men being in a garden.

Dorian Gray appreciated Basil as a friend. Though Basil was attracted to Dorian Gray, there was nothing deep about it since he was only in love with Dorian Gray's appearance which gave a huge change on Basil's artistic skills. Dorian Gray appreciated their friendship. When Basil finally had the guts to tell him about his affections, Dorian was already a changed man.

His mind was preoccupied with other thoughts like the mysterious painting, emptiness and guilt for all his evil deeds. He was bored of his conservative morality, and annoyed by his good advices. Alan Campbell was an old friend of Dorian Grays'. Alan Campbell didn't want to but dorian gray blackmailed him into destroying the body and Alan Campbell suicides afterwards Jenna. He is properly afraid that Harry will corrupt Dorian.

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