Breaking the Wall or The Pursue of an Ideal in "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

They say Oscar Wilde wrote about Dorian Gray¡¦s life in his novel entitled ¡§The portrait of Dorian Gray¡¨, but I tend to believe he wrote about the character¡¦s stolen life, his death state in fact. My paper will attempt to prove this argument in order to reach a more general conclusion regarding the real main theme of the novel ¡§The Picture of Dorian Gray¡¨.
The painted portrait of the main character stands for a work of art first of all and, as we know, one of the main characteristics of art is that it is created by human beings; the creators of art, human beings, are said to ¡§acknowledge their self-consciousness when confronted with their own image offered by art¡¨(Dan Grigorescu ¡V ¡§Prefata¡¨). We may try to apply this when discussing the main character¡¦s (Dorian Gray¡¦s) reaction on watching his portrait¡¦s transformations too. But can we? Is his portrait what a portrait generally represents, accordingly, a static image of oneself?
As we...