Comprehension:

1.What are you told of Dorian’s lifestyle?

- During the winter, Dorian Gray received guests in his house to give social party and lodged the most celebrated musicians. In these days Dorian prepared meals with delicacy and he showed his elegance in the table. In fashionable, social life was normal created events.

2.What is for him the greatest of arts?

 - Dorian Gray considered the greatest art the Life itself. Dorian Gray was an ideal for educated young man because he was always perfect in his manners, behavior, dress, so he was a pleasant man.

3.Why is Dorian Gray an ideal for educated young men? Why is being consulted on matters of fashion not enough for Dorian?

He was consulted because he was a pleasant man and all people looked at him as a style icon, for his glamour and education.

4.What is the common attitude to “worship of senses” and what has this attitude caused?

- Dorian tried to find in the sense, the highest realization, but men are scared by the passions and emotions that seem or be more strong in confront of their.

5. What are the principles of Dorian’s “new Hedonism”?

- The principle was that life were recreated and saved from the harsh and ugly Puritanism. The bases of “New Hedonism” were that no theories and limitations but experienced all the passions and moments.

Interpretation

1. What kind of narrator does Wilde use in his novel? Do you feel his presence?

- The narrator is external. I feel his presence but in the way of telling the story.

2. What idea of life is expressed in the final sentence of the passage?

- In the final sentence of the passage is expressed that life is a moment, too fast and people should live every single moment.

3. Where I the last paragraph does Wilde quote Pater?

 - Wilde quoted Pater because he expressed the idea of life’s rapidity.

4. What does the historian Arnold Hauser underline about the 1880s in the following paragraph?

- The historian Arnold Hauser underlined the decline of bourgeoisie style in the younger generation, that assumed a antisocial and immoral attitudes.

5. Could this sort of fin-de-siècle hedonism be a suitable term for the younger generation of our age?

- It isn’t suitable for the younger generation of our age because there is a different way to face the life.

6. Considering the ending of the novel, how can this story be interpreted?

- The story can be interpreted as a similitary is the division between bad and good part of individual and the passion.

7. The picture becomes Dorian’s double and records on canvas the marks of the time, while Dorian enjoys his timeless youth. Like Stevenson in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Wilde too is attracted by theme of the double. Can you see any similarities between the two novels as regards this theme?

 - Dorian Gray decided to destroy his portrait and he died. He understood that he hadn’t experienced every single year of his life but his portrait.

8. At the end of the novel Dorian kills Basil Hallward, the painter who made his portrait, and then tries to destroy the picture. Read the very ending of Dorian Gray and compare with Jekyll/Hyde’s death.

- In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the character of Dr. Jekyll revealed in a letter, written before die, his double personality.