Il ritratto di Dorian Gray di Oscar Wilde

“The picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde: brief analysis of the book, moral of the story, stylistic feature, themes and critical comment

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” is Oscar Wilde’s major works and it is one of the most important classic books of the entire English literature.
This book expresses many themes, such as: the relationship between good and evil, hypocrisy of morality in society, the double consciousness and the impossibility of moral perfection. These important topics are expressed in other books too, such as “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louise Stevenson or “The Cloven Viscount” by Italo Calvino.
But “The picture of Dorian Grey” is different from them because it is a mirror of Wilde’s hypocritical society. ‎
Moreover, this book is a metaphor of human struggle in accepting its double nature: good and evil, morality and immorality.
The moral of Dorian’s story is that good and evil cannot be separated: in the good things there is a small amount of evil, as well, in the bad things there is a small amount of good. It is the human nature and it has to be accepted.
Moreover, the book expresses the aesthetic principle of life as a work of art, in fact, Dorian true nature (the bad one) was represented in the picture, which was the mirror of his hidden and morbid nature.