Lamb to the Slaughter and Human nature

 My 3 year old cousin baby is a 3 year old. Whenever she’s in a bad mood, you just have to tape the window and wait until the hurricane pasts. I love her but she can be horrifying. If she wants something, she’ll always get it, or else she’ll just beat people with her fat fists yelling something like - “I want icecream!!!!!!!!” My uncle says that she’ll kill people for meat in the ‘Snowpiercer’; that’s her. It’s not only my baby cousin but every 3 year old, if you just look around, are such a ball of anger when they want something. No humility, no decency, no nothing. They’ll use their little violence or petty persistence to achieve what they want without any moral conscience. I believe this anger 3 year olds express conveys the very human nature Roald Dahl wanted to portrait; the anger human feel when they can’t get their own way can results into extremely horrifying acts

 It’s amusing why Roald Dahl particularly used ‘lamb’ meat for the setting. Lambs are symbol of innocence and purity. However, this symbol of innocence and ‘sheepishness’; the lamb is used for killing Mary’s husband. The lamb is the representation of Mary’s previously gentle personality that she showed outward. At the start of the story, Mary seems so helpless and even stupid because even though her husband is being such a trash, she keeps on being a gentle wife by trying to make him dinner as if nothing has happened. It was as if she was being led to the table for sacrificial victim of the marriage like a lamb. By killing her husband with a lamb and cooking it to dispose it, she has disposed of her own helpless sheepish personality and achieved what she want by killing her husband. The violent dark side of human nature when they can’t get what they want is drawn very clearly in the story when Mary kills her husband crying “But you can’t go! You can’t! I won’t let you!”

 Also, Dahl seems to write the dark side of human nature especially in the form of impulsive revenge. In ‘Nunc Dimitris’, ‘Neck’, ‘My lady, love, my dove’ and several other Dahl’s short stories, the main character all try to have their revenge by hatred or anger. In some aspect, revenge is a very childish way of expressing unpleasant feeling. In decent conscience, when people have unpleasant moment, many of the mature people would at least try to overcome the problem by some degree of manners not by a form of violence. This shows that by making the characters more childish, Dahl was more apt to portrait the childish manner of human nature, which includes impulsive boiling anger. In the story “Lamb to the Slaughter”, the character inside are all very childish like other many Dahl’s characters. They are impulsive, stubborn, and revengeful. When Mary kills her husband with a blow, the impulsive act was not only because of mere use of violence to meet her goal but the anger that results into bloody revenge.

Picture of Dorian Gray Paragraph

At first glance, Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray," might appear like another plain Faustian Tale where the main character falls into the devil's words.After all, when we first encounter Lord Henry and his beautiful words, we get the feeling that he's the one who corrupted Dorian. He was the one who awakened Dorian to his own beauty, and lured him to use his beauty for his own pleasure. However, as we continue to explore the book, we realize that there is no devil that makes his deal. The deal of youth just exists inside Dorian's portrait, which is supposedly a symbol for Dorian's desire for beauty, but later shows his most devilsh part. Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to assume that, compared to the Bible, Lord Henry is merely a snake who lured Dorian into biting into an apple, and the true devil doesn't appear as a moving character like other Faustian tales, but more so a background image that's always there: the portrait. Realizing his beauty and using it for his benefit is surely a mishap; but the true devilish character was the boiling desire for beauty inside him, which is the ultimate reason for his madness that results in his suicide. In this sense, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is different from other Faustian Tales because it shows that the true nature of the Devil is not the character outside, but has always existed inside oneself as insatiable desires.

The Picture of Dorian Gray: The identity of devil inside the book.

 I heard it before that my parents and relatives all marveled the beauty of my brother in his crib. It’s no wonder why they anticipated so much about me before I was born, a girl who was expected to be a next generation of Disney princess. As it turned out, the first sentence I heard after I came out of this word was from my dad – “Will she able to get married with this face?” A tragedy, really, to know that the very first sentence I heard in this life was the miserable disappoint of my face. As I was growing up, I could feel the power of beauty from my brother in every way; even he does some incredibly silly mistake, it was considered ‘cute’. He even got his first girlfriend when he was in kindergarten and changed them almost every month. I must admit that beauty is really an easy route for living a life; it has power different from knowledge or wisdom. However in this book, the beauty is what drives Dorian. I believe that the devil in this book didn’t come from Lord Henry, but Dorian himself in this way.

From the Book of Ceremonial Magic, dark magic is based on one simple rule: give and take. If you look at any fairytale regarding witches of dark magic, they all have some serious default. For example, the witch may have the most beautiful face or can fly with wings but will perish under the sun or melt by a simple bucket of water. They made this trade with devils to gain what they want, but would have to pay the price. This is the most basic logic of dark magic. In this logic, I believe that devil is inside the portrait of Dorian. As Dorian exclaimed how he wanted his portrait to olden instead of him, he’s made the trade with devil. The price Dorian has to pay doesn’t show up vividly, but I guess I’ll soon reach it in the end.

In my perspective, Lord Henry is just an influential charming person who introduced Dorian into new world and merely plays with his youth and beauty. He’s more like a spectator watching an opera while Dorian goes wild. The devil that really turns Dorian spoiled is ultimately the portrait. Portrait shows 200% of the pure beauty in Dorian, the sole power in itself and also signifies Dorian’s soul later on. Because of this portrait’s beauty in his first sight, Dorian begins to realize his power of beauty (also from the influence of Lord Henry) and begins to use his power of beauty in a new, evil sense, and the portrait helps him maintain this beauty. Consequently, the portrait shows how corrupted Dorian becomes as the story continues, revealing the pure evil inside the pure beauty of Dorian. The portrait becomes the portrait of demon.

Interestingly, Basil is the one who created the devil of Dorian. If Dorian has to pay the price, I believe Basil needs to do so too. The price these two must pay… I believe would cost more than their life.

The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapter 1

One of the assignments that I had when I was in middle school was drawing a friend-portrait. The serious problem I realized of drawing a portrait of someone is that it is not the matter of skills but just hating everything one drew from hair to neck. No matter how much I tried, the person in the picture was just a completely different person from what I drew. Even though the drawing did resemble some of original’s features, there was something essential missing from the portrait. There was something in one self that I couldn’t translate them into colors and curves but without it, the portrait was dead. It lacked the art, so it lacked the beauty. Only a very skilled artist would be able to translate the very essential of the beauty.. but how and where do artist find those beauty? In the preface of the book, it’s stated that “To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”. According to this statement, to show the pure beauty of the image and wipe off the vestige of personal reflection of the artist is art’s aim. Ironically, I believe that the artist finds the beauty of a person not to the pure beauty of the sitter but inside himself.

While Basil goes on and on about Dorian’s beauty and the inspiration Dorian gives to Basil, I could interpret the passage in 2 ways. First way is that Dorian is the symbol of beauty, which the artist aims for in their art. That’s why Basil can’t resist Dorian and realize that he and Dorian was meant to be. However for the other interpretation, I thought Dorian may be the narcissist part of Basil. Basil says that he put too much in himself in Dorian’s portrait. Artist tries to find the pure beauty and get the inspiration directly from it, but I thought maybe it’s the other way around – artist tries to find the beauty in himself. That’s why Basil wants to keep Dorian as a secret, the pure beauty and inspiration in him that’s fragile and young.

Human is an extremely selfish creature. Take an example of looking at a photo. While sorting out the photos, people concentrate solely on themselves, not the people walking beside them or others. Out of politeness, they remark about how Jane looks great in this picture and etc, but the most important part of sorting out the picture is to sort out one self from numerous photos. I think it’s the same with looking at an art piece. The reason why people admire art is because they want to see their own beauty in it. Probably that’s another reason why Basil couldn’t help putting himself into Dorian’s portrait. He selfishly wanted Dorian, the symbol of pure beauty to be one of his own self, the desire to fake his own self to Dorian’s beauty or maybe reflect the narcissist part in himself that he wanted to conceal.

The book seemed to talk much about beauty, but still I can’t grasp the entire meaning of the word, beauty. Beauty is such an abstract thing. It just exists. Beauty is not the tool but could be the goal in itself, the desire of human nature. Coming to think of it, human is the only animal on earth whose sole purpose could be beauty. In Discovery film, we don’t see a lion in the middle of his meal suddenly stop eating due to a beautiful sunset view. We don’t see a bird trying to sing more beautifully in order to create art, not to attract mate. Human is special in that way that they are lone creature who can admire beauty itself. In that way, Dorian is a very symbolic person in the book. He could be the sole purpose, the power, and the mere existence of human desire.

 While I was reading Chapter 1, I just had more time so I went on reading the book until I reached chapter 4. The book reminded me of Faust as it progressed but in the beginning of chapter 1 and 2, it reminded more of Hesse’s ‘Narzib und Goldmund’. Dorian, the Goldmund realizes his own beauty, nature and entirely different life in himself while talking to Harry, the Narzib. Goldmund gets more and more corrupted in the book, so do Faust – well, spoiler alert – Dorian also seems to get seriously corrupted as the book goes on. I wonder if Dorian is ever going to be saved in the end like Faust. That, I need to read on to know the answer.