The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapters 13-14

"The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes" (Wilde 163).

The fog is a metaphor for the discrepancy in Dorian's actions. He berated Sibyl Vane to the point where she took her life. He then decides to make amends for his scoldings by writing her an apology letter. Early on, Dorian fluctuated between darkness and light as frequently as the moon changes the tides. Ultimately, it was Basil who kept the tide of Dorian's emotions receding towards goodness while Lord Henry had his emotions flow towards evil. Dorian's fancy towards lord Henry whipped up an evil storm that is sure to have devastating consequences. Now that Basil has been murdered, there is no one who can keep Dorian's emotional tides at bay.



"No! don't think of that. Look at the matter purely from the scientific point of view" (Wilde 174).

Dorian flaunts his stupidity by exhibiting a misunderstanding of science. In humanity's very nature we are bound to question life. The very definition of science is the separation between knowledge and ignorance.The Scientific point of view entails the exploration of all the matters of an issue. For years Scientists believed that there was no definitive maximum speed in the universe. Albert Einstein set them straight. Einstein demonstrated that time is in fact relative. In his younger years (on route to work), Einstein, while riding a train, wondered if light reached if time was relative. Einstein taught that time is relative to the speed in which one moves. Nothing is truly at rest unless they are at rest relative to another object. What this means is that the concept of time as humanity knew it, was merely an illusion. Asking a scientist to employ science and not to analyze is like shooting someone at point blank range with a shot gun and asking them not to die. The request is unnatural and utterly ridiculous. In the sense of the definition, Dorian did help the reader experiment with the definition by helping them to organize Dorian into the ignorant section.