Karla Quintana
10/12/09
Period 4
“’How sad it is!’ murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. ‘How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June… If it were only the other way!’”

This quote means EVERYTHING to the book The Picture of Dorian Gray. This quote is pretty much a summary of the book. I picked this quote since this if where everything began to shift and change. Dorian started turning into bad person, Basil wasn’t aware that under Dorian’s sweet day demeanor was a person who did horrible things at night, and Lord Henry was sort of pleased that his views on life had changed the innocent, nice, sweet Dorian into a more twisted being. This quote was said after Dorian first met Lord Henry, where Lord Henry told him things like that there is no such thing as good influence since all influence is immoral, That is one man were to live his life fully and completely, meaning that he would fulfill every dream, then the world would gain a fresh impulse of joy. As Lord Henry corrupted his mind and thoughts, Dorian was changing. When he saw the portrait, he got vain, wished that he would be the one to stay the same and for the painting to be the one that aged. As we know the wish came true and thus the plot began to thicken. When I read it, I thought “Woah, everything is going to change now!!” I felt pretty excited. Dorian, after his fiancé died, noticed that the painting looked different (a scowl on his face) and he realized that the wish came true and started committing whatever sin he pleased, as whatever he did didn’t affect his appearance but his soul on the painting. Basil had started to worry but Dorian blew him off, even when Basil told him how he felt about him (Dorian pretty much being his muse) and I thought that was mean of him, a friend telling him how he is special to him and him just saying it’s not his fault that the friend likes him. I would have thought that went straight to the painting… and then he kills Basil later on! That is upsetting. Okay, so the quote is EXTREMELY important to the book because it’s the turning point of the story, where the main idea starts developing and he becomes (or at least his image) immortal and immoral by doing all these things and making all the aristocrats kind of back away from him.