Picture of Dorian Gray Chapter 3

1)"What a pity it was that such beauty was destined to fade!" (Wilde 39).

Lord Henry is highly proficient in offering subjective conjectures that he does not necessarily believes. Psychologically, this is emblematic of a fear of intimacy. If one never speaks, no one can ever learn one's true thoughts. Similarly, if one is constantly speaking and they may say things that they do not believe, then how is one supposed to determine what the speaker truly believes? Basil, Lord Henry, and Dorian each represent individual parts of Oscar Wilde. Lord Henry happens to embody the insecurity of the intellectual part of him that is so lost in the woods of thought that he can never find action. This novel is a large wood where Wilde is hiding, confusing us with paradoxes and enthralling us with romance. It is only after the fires of clarity burn through Widle's the thicket of deception that the Wilde has beset us through his quirky set of characters.



2)"If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different" (Wilde 44)

In societies all across the endless spectrum of history, stress has been chronic. Stress is chronic on a personal as well as a social level. On a personal level there are hobbies and other forms of methods that can help displace one's stress. For a society prayer and faith are two components that people have heavily relied on in order to alleviate stress. Personal distractions bring about an apathy towards the object of stress while religion claims that stress will be rewarded in the afterlife. These methods of stress relief (or others similar to them) and crucial to a society, however they pale in comparison to humor. Laughter (in the form of mentally sane humor) is the perfect method of coping. Laughter only exists in short blips that kicks stress down to a tolerable level. Also, without laughter, apathy and religion are worthless. If apathy is always called upon, one may come to habitually lose sight of one's problem's. If one only focuses in a strict religious manner, then radical groups develop. Look to our enemies in the middle east. The terrorist organizations put worldly emotions so out of sight that they have abandoned all laughter,save for one derived almost entirely from cynical hysteria.