Chapter 20 Quotes Flashcards
D
‘He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his…
boyhood- his rose white boyhood.’
D
‘He knew that he had…
tarnished himself.’
D
‘He had been an evil influence to others and had experience a terrible…
joy in being so.’
D
‘Ah! In what monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep…
the unspoiled splendour of eternal youth.’
‘Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor crushed it into silver splinters beneath…
his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him.’
The crushing of the mirror ends his vanity. Image of violence
‘His beauty had been to his but a mask, his youth…
but a mockery.’
‘Youth had…
spoiled him.’
‘It was the living death of his own souls that…
troubled him.’
Is he kind of already dead
‘He would never again tempt innocence. He would …
be good.’
‘The thing was still loathsome- more loathsome. If possible, than before- and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter and more like…
blood newly spilt. Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed?’
‘There was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had dropped blood even on the …
hand that had not held the knife.’
Things are not better
D on the portrait
‘It had been a conscience to him. Yes, it had been a conscience. He would…
destroy it.’
D about the knife
‘As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter’s work, and all that meant. It would kill this monstrous…
soul-life, and without its hideous warnings he would be at peaceZ he seized the thing and stabbed the picture with it.’
He kills his soul and unwittingly himself too
‘Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had…
examined the rings that they recognised who it was.’
Ironic that Dorian wants the longevity of jewellery but can’t have it. Supernatural portrait v gothic
