NAME:               William Hancock                                                      DATE & ASSIGNMENT  # ____

Weekly Synthesis Assignment |2Q-S-Q

  1. Choose two key ideas from two different sources from our daily reading assignment (These could be chapters in the novel, selections from the novel AND the contextual materials in our assigned edition, from the novel AND the assigned secondary criticism)
  2. Synthesize these two ideas: How do they speak to one another? What are you seeing in their relation? You’re making text-text and text-world connections here.
  3. Raise an open-ended question that follows from your synthesis. Given what you’re seeing/thinking, explain also what you’re wondering. What do you think is important we discuss in class?

PART 1: PREPARING FOR DISCUSSION

SOURCE IDEAS:

  1. “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.” (chapter 2)
  • “Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins—he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all. The portrait would become to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer.” (chapter 8)

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

These two passages frame Dorian’s entire moral journey. In the first, Lord Henry plants the seed of aesthetic hedonism, suggesting that denying temptation harms the soul. In the second, Dorian reaps the consequences of embracing that doctrine fully, finding freedom from guilt but also surrendering his humanity. Together, they illustrate how Wilde uses temptation and beauty as vehicles to explore corruption, influence, and the illusion of moral immunity. The evolution from idea to embodiment reveals the destructive potential of philosophies divorced from empathy and responsibility.

QUESTION:

How does Wilde use the transformation of Dorian’s beliefs—from Lord Henry’s seductive philosophy to his own lived experience—to critique the allure and consequences of living for beauty and pleasure alone?

Part 2: In-class Writing Response (NAME:__________________)