Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde Library, Unabridged edition

Dorian Gray is a handsome young man who falls in with a group of friends whose amoral philosophies he finds quite appealing. After he has his portrait painted, his frivolity and general demeanor degenerate into wickedness, but only the portrait bears the effects of his descent into decadence and serves as a powerful symbol of Gray's internal ruin. Dorian himself, however, remains as young and unspoiled as the day he first sat for the painting.

Wilde's exploration of life without limits or consequences shocked its late-Victorian audience and remains highly unsettling to modern readers. We, like Dorian Gray, are forced to reconsider whether seemingly total freedom and absolute knowledge are really worth their inner costs.