{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "slug": "de-profundis",
  "title": "De Profundis",
  "author": "Oscar Wilde",
  "language": "en",
  "spoilers": true,
  "characters": [
    {
      "name": "Narrator",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The first-person voice of the letter, recounting his imprisonment, reflections, and hopes for release."
    },
    {
      "name": "Oscar Wilde",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The imprisoned writer whose first-person account forms the text; he reflects on his conviction, his family, and how suffering may shape his life and art."
    },
    {
      "name": "Narrator’s mother",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The narrator’s late mother, who often quoted Goethe’s lines about sorrow and was a source of wisdom to him."
    },
    {
      "name": "Narrator’s father",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The narrator’s father, who helped bequeath him his family name and sent him to Oxford."
    },
    {
      "name": "Narrator’s wife",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The narrator’s kind and gentle wife, who travelled from Genoa to England to tell him of his mother’s death."
    },
    {
      "name": "Unnamed friend who raised his hat",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A man who silently raised his hat to the handcuffed narrator in a courthouse corridor, an act of kindness the narrator remembers with gratitude."
    },
    {
      "name": "R---",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A friend who visits the narrator in prison and is expected to meet him at the gate upon his release; the text gives only this abbreviated name."
    },
    {
      "name": "Unnamed compassionate woman",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A woman whose sympathy and kindness have helped the narrator bear his troubles; her presence has deeply influenced him."
    },
    {
      "name": "Jesus of Nazareth",
      "aliases": [
        "Christ",
        "Jesus"
      ],
      "description": "The central religious figure discussed by the narrator as a poet, romantic individualist, and embodiment of imaginative sympathy and love."
    },
    {
      "name": "André Gide",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A writer with whom the narrator recalls discussing how the teachings of Plato and Christ could find fulfilment in art."
    },
    {
      "name": "Greek woman",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A woman in a story told in the Gospel of Mark who answers Christ’s test by saying that little dogs eat the crumbs beneath the table."
    },
    {
      "name": "Mary Magdalen",
      "aliases": [
        "Mary Magdalene"
      ],
      "description": "A sinner whom Christ forgives; the narrator depicts her offering costly ointment to Christ as a beautiful moment of love and repentance."
    },
    {
      "name": "St. Francis of Assisi",
      "aliases": [
        "Saint Francis of Assisi"
      ],
      "description": "A poet and Christian whom the narrator regards as a rare true imitator of Christ; he took poverty as his bride."
    },
    {
      "name": "Unnamed friend addressed by the narrator",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The person addressed as “you” in the letter, to whom the narrator explains his reflections and hopes; no name is supplied in the passage."
    },
    {
      "name": "Marsyas",
      "aliases": [
        "Phrygian Faun"
      ],
      "description": "A mythic musician whose song was said to end when Apollo defeated him; the narrator hears an echo of his cry in modern art."
    },
    {
      "name": "Apollo",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The god who defeats Marsyas in the musical contest, winning with the lyre over Marsyas’s reed."
    },
    {
      "name": "Charles Baudelaire",
      "aliases": [
        "Baudelaire"
      ],
      "description": "A poet whose modern art, the narrator says, carries a bitter echo of Marsyas’s cry."
    },
    {
      "name": "Alphonse de Lamartine",
      "aliases": [
        "Lamartine"
      ],
      "description": "A poet whose work the narrator describes as carrying a sweet, plaintive echo of Marsyas’s cry."
    },
    {
      "name": "Paul Verlaine",
      "aliases": [
        "Verlaine"
      ],
      "description": "A poet whose work the narrator describes as carrying a mystic echo of Marsyas’s cry."
    },
    {
      "name": "Frédéric Chopin",
      "aliases": [
        "Chopin"
      ],
      "description": "A composer whose music, the narrator says, expresses Marsyas’s cry through its deferred resolutions."
    },
    {
      "name": "Edward Burne-Jones",
      "aliases": [
        "Burne-Jones"
      ],
      "description": "An artist whose women, the narrator says, are haunted by discontent."
    },
    {
      "name": "Matthew Arnold",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A poet whose song of Callicles celebrates the lyre’s victory, though the narrator hears doubt and distress in his verses."
    },
    {
      "name": "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe",
      "aliases": [
        "Goethe"
      ],
      "description": "A writer whom Matthew Arnold followed; the narrator says he could not relieve Arnold’s troubled undertone."
    },
    {
      "name": "William Wordsworth",
      "aliases": [
        "Wordsworth"
      ],
      "description": "A poet whom Matthew Arnold followed; the narrator says he could not relieve Arnold’s troubled undertone."
    },
    {
      "name": "Thyrsis",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A figure Matthew Arnold mourns in verse, mentioned by the narrator."
    },
    {
      "name": "Unnamed jeering onlookers at Clapham Junction",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The crowd who laughed at the narrator in convict dress and handcuffs as he stood on the station platform."
    },
    {
      "name": "Unnamed friend of ten years’ standing",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A longtime friend who visits the narrator in prison, says he believes him innocent and a victim of a plot, and remains his friend after hearing the narrator acknowledge his perverse pleasures."
    },
    {
      "name": "Rosencrantz",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "One of Hamlet’s college friends in Shakespeare’s play; he and Guildenstern fail to understand Hamlet’s anguish and are presented by the narrator as enduring types of limited sympathy."
    },
    {
      "name": "Guildenstern",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "One of Hamlet’s college friends in Shakespeare’s play; he and Rosencrantz fail to understand Hamlet’s anguish and are presented by the narrator as enduring types of limited sympathy."
    },
    {
      "name": "Hamlet",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The dreaming, divided protagonist of Shakespeare’s play, burdened by a mission to act and unable to resolve his will."
    },
    {
      "name": "Brutus",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A figure cited by the narrator as having used madness as a cloak for his purposeful will."
    },
    {
      "name": "Claudius",
      "aliases": [
        "the King"
      ],
      "description": "The king in Hamlet, whose guilty conscience Hamlet exposes through the play within the play."
    },
    {
      "name": "Horatio",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "Hamlet’s companion, who survives to report Hamlet’s story and accepts the pain of remaining in the world."
    },
    {
      "name": "Angelo",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A character type from drama whom the narrator compares with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as enduring beyond their stories."
    },
    {
      "name": "Tartuffe",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A character type from drama whom the narrator compares with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as enduring beyond their stories."
    },
    {
      "name": "Euripides",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "A playwright whose play about Iphigeneia contains the saying that the sea washes away the world’s stains and wounds."
    },
    {
      "name": "Iphigeneia",
      "aliases": [],
      "description": "The subject of a play by Euripides, mentioned by the narrator."
    },
    {
      "name": "Carl Linnaeus",
      "aliases": [
        "Linnaeus"
      ],
      "description": "A naturalist whom the narrator says wept for joy at the sight of an English upland covered in flowering furze."
    },
    {
      "name": "Théophile Gautier",
      "aliases": [
        "Gautier"
      ],
      "description": "A writer whose phrase about those for whom the visible world exists expresses the narrator’s lifelong response to visible beauty."
    }
  ],
  "analysis": {
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    "generatedAt": "2026-10-24T10:43:21.128802+00:00",
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    "extractionWarnings": [],
    "promptSha256": "ef6b30afebc4d1ea57690ea5b456465684c74b7af125ea8d48e25e6ba2004d41",
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}