The Art of Human Nature.

Vinod Chatlani

Tr. Ana Isaza

Writing

23 July 2013

The Art of Human Nature

Human nature is very special. There are only two differences between people, whether he or she is a good person or bad. This difference is a common duality of human nature. No one can determine whether someone is doing the good or the bad. This duality is an interesting topic as one can analyze whether a person chooses to be bad or the society has an impact on his/her behavior. Describing the human nature can depend and vary on a person’s thinking. The idea is to explain about the theme of the story and compare or contrast it with another book or movie and relate to our experiences.

The Theme

The theme of this story is human nature and the influence of society. People tend to confuse whether a person is good or bad by his/her own account, but this story of Dorian Gray is a perfect example to show how human nature functions according to society’s influence.  A person’s thoughts affect the behavior of person and the actions he/she does. In the story one can see how Dorian gets easily influenced by society. Dorian specially changed his behavior once he started to be good friends with Lord Henry. He totally changed his way of thinking and started to satisfy his needs and that was making him selfish. Although, if one analyzes Lord Henry’s nature, he was not a person that committed murders or used to sleep with different women at the same time, while Dorian was. Dorian was being very selfish and he easily got influenced by society. The author has focused on that his characters should question their morality and ethics. This has to do in relation also with the time the story was taken place. The author describes precisely and objectively on how the characters interact with society.

Compare and Contrast

One movie I chose to compare with The Picture of Dorian Gray is with Anna Karenin, which was written by a Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy. The structure of the story of Anna Karenin shares a similar theme to Dorian Gray’s. This both stories are made in the same era. Both authors of these stories were realistic. Anna Karenin was the main protagonist of the story, and her role was to show the passion of love. She was married to Alexei Karenin. She didn’t develop a true love with Alexei Karenin, but she loved her child. Later on in the story she falls in love with another man who is an elegant military officer called Vronsky with the same name Alexei. This nonsense created Anna to have conflicts with her husband and she started to betray him as well as her son. In those times, society had a different point of view regarding whether a person is decent or not. Anna Karenin was in a risk of spoiling her name in society and she knew she would get criticized.

        In the end Anna Karenin decided to go with her lover and escape from her husband and son. She didn’t care much  about society while her husband really did although he didn’t love her either showing how one has to care for one’s name in society, but all depends on whether one person cares or not. In contrast to Dorian Gray, Lord Henry influenced Dorian’s behavior since he used to go out with Lord Henry to in outings. Dorian changed his behavior totally and Basil warned him to not spoil his name on society because one’s name is the most important things for a person. Dorian decided to ignore Basil and later on killed him from his outburst of frustration. Analyzing this situation, everyone wants to be respected in society, but after all one’s actions and thinking depends on us. Although, society has somewhat influence in the behavior of a person, it doesn’t in as one’s decision.

...