Salvador Dali was born in Spain in 1904. Just 9 months before he was born, his older brother died, so his parents found ways to convince him that he was a reincarnation of him. Apparently, Dali even told people that the terrifying memory of this dead brother haunted him for the rest of his life. Its been heard that one of his favorite pastimes was walking around his house in a blue emperor's costume. Because his parents felt like Dali was actually his dead brother, they treated him like a king because they feared his death once again. Because of the way his parents treated him, and since he always trying to be as wonderful as his dead brother, made him have a gigantic personality change. Since he had to put up with so many strange thing at such a young age, I guess that somewhat explains why Dali had such an odd and amazing personality, which is highly shown in his paintings. I learned that he even said in one of his journals that the stress he had to deal with when he was little, trying to live life as his dead brother and himself, made him really fascinated with death and body decay.He started painting at the age of 10, which disturbed his parents. They were not used to seeing such strange pictures, especially from their little boy. They brought him to many psychiatrists, but they could not understand what was wrong either. Neither him or his parents would tell them about his dead brother, so of course, they wouldnt know enough information to diagnose him with anything. Eventually his parents just got used to his ways, and overlooked them. After some time went by, he was still obsessed with death and dark things, and continued to used those as factors in some of his art. In his paintings, he uses many different symbols to represent his feelings. In The Persistence of Memory and the Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory , the main points of focus are the melting and dripping clocks. I feel that these symbolize his ...