chapter 9 and 10

Quote: "He regretted that he had not told Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and still more poisonous influences that came from his own teperament" (Wilde 122).

Explanation: Dorian is showing some regret for the decision he has made to live the life of pleasure. Thus there is still some resentment of the direction he is headed, because he says that Basil could have helped him to avoid "Lord Henry's influence [and the] poisonous influences that came from his own temperament" (122). But instead of trying to withdraw from this immoral life, he chooses to continue because he believes that "the future was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real" (123).

Quote: "The love that he bore him-for it was really love- had nothing in it htat was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespearer himself" (122).

Explanation: Dorian is explaining the love that Basil has for him. It is partially a love for his physique, "It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses" (122). So there is physical attraction which is characteristic of homosexuality. But he also references another type of  love that Basil has, a love that is characterized by Michael Angelo, Montaigne, Winckelmann, and Shakespeare; all of whom had homosexual feelings that they shared and depicted through their art. He like them showed his homosexual feelings through his work. Thus Dorian is saying that Basil has traits that can be considered gay.

Vocab:

Misanthrope: someone who dislikes people in general

"He had absolutely notihing to do, almost died of ennui, and became a confirmed misanthrope" (113).

Reverie: absent minded dreaming while awake

"As he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and the creeping shadows" (129).