Literary Elements: Imagery

"The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragonfly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what was coming." - pg 9

This quote creates imagery, which means that it appeals to the reader's senses. This part is when Basil is about to tell Lord Henry of the time he met Dorian Gray, and Lord Henry starts to get more interested in Dorian as he lostens to the time they met.

Elements of Historical Contents: Wealth

In this book, there are problems when it comes to wealth. Dorian wants to marry a poor lady named Sibyl Vane, and his friends kept complaining on how poor she was. In the Victorian era, the rich and poor were seperated in a huge way. The situatuation with Dorian and Sybil is accurate with marrying up, which was prefferable, and not down.

Elements of Romance/ Relationship

Dorain Gray and Sibyl Vane are madly in love with each other. All they thought about was each other, but that only lasted so long. He was going to marry this young lady, and he regrets nothing so far. But when Dorian tells Basil and Henry to come and join him to watch a show to show them how talented Sibyl is, she makes a horrible preformance, and Dorian is disappointed. He was just in love with her acting, beauty, and her presence. Dorian ends the relationship the night of the preformance, and she kills herself, because she can not live without him.

Literary Elements (Flashback)

"Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's...I turned halfway around and saw Dorain Gray for the first time...I knew I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself." Basil Hallward Pg. 9-10



A flash back is when there is a interuption in the chronological order of a story to bring back a time in the past, mostly because it has to do with something important to the plot.  Then purpose of this text is that Basil was talking to Lord Henry and was explaining how it was destined that Dorian Gray and himself to meet.