The Soul's Corruption In Gothic Literature
The Soul’s Corruption
The Gothic begins with later-eighteenth-century writers' in the Romantic period. When it was launched, the Gothic featured terrifying experiences in ancient castles experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and others. By extension, it came to designate the mysterious, fantastic, supernatural, the terrifying, the pleasurably terrifying, in literature more generally. Gothic literature is meant to create terror, open fiction to the realm of the irrational, perverse impulses, nightmarish terrors, obsessions lying beneath the surface of the civilized mind, and to demonstrate the unknown presence of the strange existing world that …show more content…
Lord Henry is considered a selfish aristocrat has the whole world at his fingertips. Nothing seems to have any meaning for Lord Henry except his own pleasure. For instance, Lord Henry proclaims, "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame -- "Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what to say” (Wilde 21). Lord Henry is a rationalist that only believes in logic, money object, and art. Lord Henry uses Dorian as a tool for pleasure and Dorian really puts his faith in Lord Henry to help him throughout his journey. For example, “Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured. "Nothing …show more content…
The doppelganger is a variation of Dorian’s appearance to the physical condition of the painting to display how corruption can be hidden. Dorian soul was turned rotten by the influence of the painting, Lord Henry, and paranoia. Lord Henry played a key role in the downfall of Dorian because his rationalist mentality had a bad impact on Dorian’s life and soul. Dorian soon dies for his actions of cruelty by murder. As, John Steinbeck has said, “Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of
The Gothic begins with later-eighteenth-century writers' in the Romantic period. When it was launched, the Gothic featured terrifying experiences in ancient castles experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and others. By extension, it came to designate the mysterious, fantastic, supernatural, the terrifying, the pleasurably terrifying, in literature more generally. Gothic literature is meant to create terror, open fiction to the realm of the irrational, perverse impulses, nightmarish terrors, obsessions lying beneath the surface of the civilized mind, and to demonstrate the unknown presence of the strange existing world that …show more content…
Lord Henry is considered a selfish aristocrat has the whole world at his fingertips. Nothing seems to have any meaning for Lord Henry except his own pleasure. For instance, Lord Henry proclaims, "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame -- "Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what to say” (Wilde 21). Lord Henry is a rationalist that only believes in logic, money object, and art. Lord Henry uses Dorian as a tool for pleasure and Dorian really puts his faith in Lord Henry to help him throughout his journey. For example, “Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured. "Nothing …show more content…
The doppelganger is a variation of Dorian’s appearance to the physical condition of the painting to display how corruption can be hidden. Dorian soul was turned rotten by the influence of the painting, Lord Henry, and paranoia. Lord Henry played a key role in the downfall of Dorian because his rationalist mentality had a bad impact on Dorian’s life and soul. Dorian soon dies for his actions of cruelty by murder. As, John Steinbeck has said, “Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of