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The Literature

Contemporary life is impossible without reading. The influence of literature on people's mind is great. Regular reading enriches your knowledge of the world and helps to form your entire personality. If you feel that you lack information, knowledge, and words to express your opinions - read more! Thanks to books we can talk to people who lived in different countries and ages. A book is one of the greatest wonders of the world. It gives you a unique chance to link up with authors who lived hundreds and thousands years ago. The book is a faithful and undemanding friend.

Poetry, drama, the short story and the novel – all these forms go to make up literature.

Most novels consist of:

• Characters The people involves in the story.
• Setting The background – the place(s) where and the time when the story takes place.
• Theme The main idea behind the novel.
• Plot The series of events or happenings that go to make up the story.
• Climax The point (or points) in the story where action reaches a high point of excitement

The Picture of Dorian Gray

• Tittle

The Picture of Dorian Gray

• Author

Oscar Wilde

• Setting

The action takes place in London, England, in the late nineteenth century. The narration also says Dorian Gray spent time at a villa in Trouville, at a house in Algiers, and at a house he maintained in Nottinghamshire.

• Characters

The main characters are:

- Dorian Gray – a handsome and narcissistic young man who becomes enthralled with Lord Henry's idea of a new hedonism. He begins to indulge in every kind of pleasure, moral and immoral.

- Basil Hallward – an artist who becomes infatuated with Dorian's beauty. Dorian helps Basil to realize his artistic potential, as Basil's portrait of Dorian proves to be his finest work. A devout Christian with conservative values, he is later murdered by Dorian.

- Lord Henry "Harry" Wotton – an imperious and decadent dandy who is a friend to Basil initially, but later becomes more intrigued with Dorian's beauty and naivety. Extremely witty, Lord Henry is seen as a critique of Victorian culture at the end of the century, espousing a view of indulgent hedonism. He conveys to Dorian his world view, and Dorian becomes corrupted as he attempts to emulate him though Basil points out that Harry "never say[s] anything good but never do[es] anything bad."

• Theme

Aestheticism and duplicity

Aestheticism is a strong motif and is tied in with the concept of the double life. A major theme is that aestheticism is merely an absurd abstract that only serves to disillusion rather than dignify the concept of beauty.

• Climax

The climax of a narrative work can be defined as the turning point at which the conflict begins to resolve itself for better or worse, or as the final and most exciting event in a series of events. According to the first definition, the climax of The Picture of Dorian Gray occurs when Dorian first notices a change in the portrait, after the death of Sybil Vane. At this point, he realizes that he is sinking in a morass of evil. According to the second definition, the climax occurs when Dorian attempts to "kill" the portrait but instead kills himself.

• Plot

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfillment of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.

Characters

As we get deeper and deeper into a fascinating story, we become more and more interested and involved in the problems and crises of the characters.

A good novelist promotes this interest and involvement by ingeniously revealing more and more about the characters (and especially the main characters) as we read on. There are several ways a novelist can do this. There is:

• The direct description method – The novelist dives the reader a direct description of physical appearance, thoughts and actions.
• The other character method – We look at one character through the eyes of another character.
• The self-revelation method – We learn more about a character by reading what he or she actually says and does.

(And, of course, more than of these ways may be used.)

Stylistic devices

In literature and writing, a stylistic device is the use of any of a variety of techniques to give an auxiliary meaning, idea, or feeling to the literal or written.

• Metaphor

A metaphor is a comparison used to add descriptive meaning to a phrase (without using the words "like" or "as"). Metaphors are generally not meant literally, and may have little connotative similarity to the concepts they are meant to portray.

Example: The man's arm exploded with pain, spiderwebs of fire crawling up and down its length as the tire of a passing car crushed it. (There is no literal explosion, spiderweb, or fire, but the words are used to create images and draw similarities to the way such an event would feel)

• Simile

The easiest stylistic device to find is a simile, because you only have to look for the words "as" or "like". A simile is a comparison used to attract the reader's attention and describe something in descriptive terms.

Example: The beast had eyes as big as baseballs and teeth as long as knives.

Example: She put her hand to the boy's head, which was steaming like a hot train.

• Personification

Permitting an inanimate object to perform as if it were human.

• Charactonym

This is when the name of a character has a symbolic meaning. For example, in Dickens' Great Expectations, Miss Havisham has a sham, or lives a life full of pretense. In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Rev. Dimmesdale metaphorically fades away (dims) as the novel progresses, while Chillingworth has a cold (chilled) heart.

• Paradox

In literary terminology, a paradox is an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless somehow true. Paradox can take the form of an oxymoron, overstatement or understatement. Paradox can blend into irony.

• Epithet

An epithet is a descriptive term (word or phrase) accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title. For example, Frederick the Great.

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