Notes about the Extract from The Picture of Dorian Gray, pg 398 (30/5/12)

The extract is the end of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
The text is composed of three sequences. The first sequence focuses reader's attention on Dorian's thoughts and emotions. In this part Dorian stabs the portrait because it represents himself and his consciousness. There is an association between the portrait and his conscience, that is a symbol. Destroying the picture he wants to destroy is consciousness: so art coincides with life.
Dorian feels guilty and he cleaned the knife when he killed Basil Hallward: in this way he cleans his conscience. O. Wilde brings forward the main topic of Modernist literature, that is consciousness, but also tradition and intertextuality. From this the reader understands Dorian is not able to live with his consciousness and the bright knife is only an illusion. He is not free because he made many evil action in the past.
Right from this part the reader understands there is a third person omniscient narrator, who speaks to the reader.
In the second sequence the narrator uses an onomatopeic style. He uses onomatopeias because he wants to make feel the reader as if he were there (it is also a Modernist technique). So it is a language of the senses, that adds meaning to the words. In this sequence the narrator focuses on how the external world perceives the event. So the event is presented throughout two different points of view.
The narrator in this sequence plays on dark and light: light represents innocence, while dark the evil (people can not see in the darkness, so there is mistery). The house is old: it represents the past and Dorian's guilties. Moreover the penthouse, where the picture is, is a typical setting of gothic novels.