Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

"This book was entertaining for the fact that the author seemed gay."


"When I just read some chapters of this book, I didn't realized anything wrong with it. However, I talked it over with others and realized that the book was full of allusions to the 'worst side of life,' something that might remind you of Hyde in 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.'

Oscar Wilde, the author, was gay, so there are even allusions to that. This book was considered 'immoral,' and the people during that time who read this book were extremely surprised. This book was the evidence given in Wilde's trial for his homosexual liaisons.

Wilde noted in a letter, 'Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be-in other ages, perhaps.'

Dorian, in a language (I think it was ancient Greek, but I'm not sure), means 'brotherly love.'

I mean, the story starts out by describing the scene where Basil is at his studio with Lord Henry. As you can obviously guess, they're both male, but the author says, 'The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses...there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. From the corner...Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-cloured blossoms...' and so on. Do you notice how the author put in as much 'feminine' details as possible?

And as the story goes, it gets worse and worse. The author states 'A white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him, and wondered why he refused to accept any money for them,...' Do you understand what this means? This means that the cherries have been picked in the midnight. Would you pick cherries in midnight? No, unless you are a robber.

Also, on the same page(pg.100), 'A long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him,...' If you don't know the meaning of 'defiled,' you might want to look it up in the dictionary.

This book is full of 'poisonous influences.' Even Wilde accepts the fact. Dorian kills his friend Basil, 'He rushed at him, and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man's head down on the table, and stabbing again and again.'

If you want to read this book, I'm not the one to stop you. But I hope to be the one who make you think twice about doing so."


"I tried classics but they are for people way smarter than me, I like BDB, psy-changeling, dark-hunter and other series alike and I’m damn proud of it!!"


"This was honestly one of the hardest reads I have ever had to overcome. Nearly every observation that Wilde makes is absurd and unfounded. The depravity of this book is astonishing, it reminded me of Hemingway's 'Tender is the Night,' which I utterly abhorred. Wilde's own perverse desires saturate the book with an unflattering blatancy."


"I felt like it was all about homosexuality...didn't finish it"


"After having studied The Proclamation on the Family it was easy to pick out every false belief that these shallow characters held and professed."


"i hate dorian gray..if any of you love to hear james blunt's.plis listen 2 one of his songs, tears and rain...he sang about dorian gray..."


"Piece of shit. Wilde, where are your balls, where is the risk? Throw the fucking dice, you pussy."


"The novel The Picture of Dorian Grey is an unoriginal story line with disturbing morals in which innocent people are corrupted. Written in the late 18th century by Oscar Wilde the novel is an example of homosexual fiction. While the sexual preference of the characters is never addressed it is often hinted at. Many of the morals presented in the novel are very disturbing."


"What can be worse than reading about guys giving detailed descriptions of other guys they are enthralled with?!"


"Wow Oscar Wilde, Could you not have been more blatantly homosexual ? It should have been obvious that Oscar had a taste for the same gender after he wrote this book. I found Dorian Gray to be a reflection of what most humans want. Immortality. Dorian Gray disgusted me."


"Very piquerest and floural with its pages and pages of desriptions. I think is was very new and dramatic for the time period is was written in- but for now- really he only killed one person.... now a days that will not even get you 20 yrs in prison."


"A nauseating amount of symbolism for, shall we say, 'alternative sexuality'...too many men poised delicately on sofas, too many red, plump male lips lingering behind tufts of colorful lilacs and so on. It makes one wonder whether Wilde really wanted to write a novel so much as he wanted a forum to covertly publicize his own fantasies."


"gay"