Dorian Gray

So I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray a couple of days ago, but I was so caught up in writing the analysis that I completely forgot about the blog. Overall, I'm glad that I left this book for last. It was the most interesting out of the three and it was a good refresher of all the information from HTRLLAP. Every once in a while I found myself going back to look for details that didn't seem important at first. I felt as if I was reading the book so fast to try and figure out what was going to happen next, that I was missing all of the important details. After reading the book, however, it was remarkable how many notes I had ended up taking while reading. I really did not notice how much highlighting I had done and how much notes I had taken until I started writing the analysis. I was surprised at how much I had absorbed the information from HTRLLAP and put it to work in The Picture of Dorian Gray. While reading the book, it really was incredible to see how much the author was able to use flowers and nature to symbolise Dorian Gray's life all the time, and still manage not to make it seem so repetitive. As Dorian's nature "developed like a flower", I felt as if my own understanding of the information from HTRLLAP, along with all the information from this book, was growing as well. By the end of the book I had a new perspective towards all the symbolism that the author had included. It seemed that throughout the book, nature was used to describe the characters and symbolise their lives, especially Dorian's. However, whenever one of these characters' lives took a turn for the worse, nature and it's symbolism were the only thing that remained pure. This reminded me of Sibyl Vane. Even though Dorian Gray didn't have a heart when he claimed that his love for her had ended, she still had stayed there "like a trampled flower". It seemed to me that even through the most tragic events, Sibyl Vane would always be the one pure thing in Dorian Gray's life. Even if she wasn't mentioned throughout most of the book, when he remembered her at the end it was obvious that she really was the one pure thing that he had had in his life after all those wrong-doings. Because of this, I think that in most cases, whenever there is an event in which a character seems to be, in a way, destroyed or demoralised, there is always something pure that is still present.