Yesterday I finished Oscar Wilde’s story about Dorian Grey. This time I didn’t notice and read a rewritten book, adopted for a certain level of English learners. I noticed from the beginning that there was virtually nothing unknown words and was very surprised about it. In the middle of the book my suspicions reached the peak and I googled a chapter from the original book. The plot was the same, but the original story is more reach and intricate. Though, I decided to stick with the initial variant and finished it in a couple of days.
The story is about a young man who was sitting for an outstanding painter. This painter wrote a wonderful picture of Dorian. It was so good that Dorian expressed regret that he would become old and ugly but his beauty would remain on the portrait making him sad. He uttered the wish to switch his fate with portrait so he could remain young and the portrait would face the aging. And his wish became true. He did ugly things and his appearance remained the same, while portrait became more and more repulsive.
At the end of the day Dorian could not bead the portrait that rimended him about all his sins and he stick the knife into it. Later, servants found dead ugly man with a knife in his heart who laid under the portait of a young and beautiful man.
The story is facinating itsefl but even more interesting was how uncomfortable is was for Dorian to live among the people full of envy to his beauty that remains unchanged through the years. I remembered a book Capital by Thomas Piketty where he describes who bad is it for society when several people are too rich, while other remains poor. Piketty proclaimes in his book that social justice is required for a peacful society. Otherwise it is doomed to social unrests. Same thing is in Wilde’s book. Dorian was too privileged in compare with the people around him. And this disproportion killed his soul and forced him to ceased gis own life. Looks like sometimes too much is too bad.