Brainstorm! (We are eating pepper and chips!)

"Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them! And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?"
-Wilde, in Dorian Gray

Today I finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Here are the things I have been thinking about in relation to this book. I am currently working on expanding on each of these, I promise. But, for now, I guess this is more of a brainstorm. Live wid it.

1) Beauty vs Goodness. Why is it that we have come to see them as the same thing? I've actually been thinking about this issue for a while, as Natty very well knows.

2) Lord Henry is one of the best examples of Satan I have ever read. I've got so many reasons, one obvious one being that he is excellent with flattery. And is an ass.

3) Sophisms are especially annoying when you clearly see the fallacy of their grounding assumptions.  They are extremely dangerous when you don't.

4) I find this to be a very moral book. It makes me both loath and fear sin itself. It is funny to me that anyone sees otherwise, but many are led to follow Lord Henry's words as Dorian does because they really are quite clever.

5) I have the same problem with the people who follow Dorian's example that I do with the people who identify and follow Holden Caulfield in Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. I really do believe that these people totally missed the boat in their reading of these characters. I don't care if that last sentence was closed minded of me- Everything is up for interpretation. But it's what I feel. You can't know what the author meant. It doesn't only mean one thing. Yours is just one opinion. Some scholars say otherwise. Blah blah blah. Watevs, if you look up to these characters as a model for how to act or see the world, you have issues, or are way dumb. These people are probably also the type to never understand sarcasm, or worse they think they do but don't. In my opinion.

My brainstormy list is getting a bit ranty so I'll stop for now. And I'm sure all these points are better worded in any workbook given to high school teachers on this novel anyway.