Goodness Tainted Thoreau Quote Analysis Essay -- essays research paper

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.?-Walden, Henry David ThoreauThere are twain ways that this quotation might be interpreted, one way focuses on a persons goodness, or lack of, and the other concerns benign or vicious intentions.The quotation could be interpreted to mean that it is a sadder thing for a good person to decline into immorality than for a bad person to do something wicked. This meter reading of the quote can be illustrated by the book The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray enters the story as an enchanting, vivacious, almost cherubic youth, parallel to the beautiful Greek god Adonis. As the story progresses, Dorian gets cadaverous into a habit of hedonism, financial waste, and self destruction, and this moral decline is paralleled by gradual distortion of his once beautiful portrait. At the end of the book, afterwards Dorian had fallen so far as to commit murder, he is shocked to find that his image has become bloated and hideo us, and in a take on of outrage, he stabs his portrait, therefore killing himself. All in all, Dor...