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Dorian Gray: escaping
form himself


Pirandello, with the theory of the psychological relativism,
thought that we are surrounded by people with a personal point of view about
ourselves and that this may not agree with that of anyone else, nor with what
we are really.


Oscar Wilde, in the novel The picture of Dorian Gray
(1891), exasperates the gap between the true, malicious and vicious nature of
the protagonist, that in the novel is represented by the portrait, and his way
to appear to the others, who are brought by Dorian's mask of beauty and youth
to see him pure and innocent.


As its mask
is separated from reality Dorian falls into despair and remorse:


At the
beginning, when he noticed thath Basil’s portrait of him has changed, he
decided to hide the picture to the others and to his own eyes and to indulge in
every kind of pleasure, having the opportunity
to protect his reputation with the mask of his beauty.


But when, eighteen years later, the difference between
Dorian and his portrait became remarkable and Basil arrives to question him
about the rumors of his indulgences, Dorian blames the artist for his fate and
stabs him to death: although he knew what he really become, he couldn't bear it
and, above all, he couldn’t suffer that someone else knows it.


Later in the story, after he escaped the revenge of James
Vane, the brother of Sybil who killed herself for Dorian eighteen years before,
tired of his sad secret, wanting to forget and begin a new chapter of his
existence, he will attemp to amend his sins by not breaking the heart of his
lastest innocent conquest, hoping that in this way the painting, and so his own
soul, will get back its lost beauty and youth reflecting his mask.


But since this couldn't be, in a fit of rage, trying to escape
from his real self, he destroyed the portrait, dying. His body suddenly got old
and orrible: as certain characters of Pirandello, when he understood that it
was impossible for him to be as he always appeared, he yield to anger and
madness, killing himself.



Grazie!

la domanda sorge spontanea: eh bem?