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How Does Dorian Gray Good Against Evil

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The Internal Struggle of Good Against Evil In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being” (Solzhenitsyn 168); however righteousness always triumphs in the battle against villainy. The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde portrays this struggle within Dorian Gray as he faces the toxic influence of Lord Henry, and goes against his morality and Basil Hallward. The clash between hedonism and altruism in the novel exemplifies the prevalence of good against evil. The first battle between the two forces occurs in the exposition of the novel, before the main character is introduced. In the opening chapter, Basil Hallward, a kind and talented artist, argues with his …show more content…

The murder of his friend forces Dorian to evaluate the severity of his sins and also reconsider his lifestyle. The portrait he once found fascinating now looms over him with a “loathsome red dew” (Wilde 146) on one of the hands. As his sins weigh upon him, Dorian attempts to repent through good deeds, but nonetheless, he finds no change in the portrait. The lack of transformation in the portrait suggests that Dorian still feels influence from evil, and does not truly want to change himself. Lord Henry mocks Dorian’s attempts to “moralize” and tells him that it is no use. Despite Lord Henry’s discouragement, Dorian felt a “wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood”(Wilde 183-185), and finally rejects the influence of hedonism over his life. In order to “kill the past” (Wilde 188), Dorian stabs the wretched portrait with the same knife he used to kill Basil. However, when he stabs the painting, all of the deformities from the painting transfer to him and kill him. This event symbolizes the final triumph of good over evil, in that Dorian finally paid for his sins, and refused to live a life of malevolence any

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640 Words | 3 Pages

No matter how hard Dorian tries to act innocent, his sins cannot easily be erased since he acts pure for selfish reasons, such as clearing his conscience. Additionally, Wilde uses mist to symbolize Dorian’s uncertainty about beauty. As Dorian enters the opium den, “the mist thickened, he felt afraid” (205). In Plato’s theory, Dorian does not completely understand the beauty of something, since he glances it from at a surface level and therefore, remains far from the truth and results in confusion and uncertainty, such as the mist. Moreover, Wilde suggests how before Basil’s murder, Dorian did not appear completely innocent but society could still consider him pure and white if he prayed for God’s forgiveness.

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880 Words | 4 Pages

Lord Henry was a terrible influence on Dorian by his words and the yellow book. It was given to Dorian by Lord Henry as a gift, “For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book” (Wilde 92). Lord Henry’s influence on Dorian is horrifying, just as the yellow book poisoned Dorian’s mind and gave him dangerous ideas, Lord Henry has done the same to him. In a way, the yellow book itself represents Lord Henry, with all of its cynicism and pessimistic view on life, it twists Dorian’s once innocent mind into one that is filled with monstrous ideas. The yellow book poisoned him, causing him to be obsessed with it “and [he] had them bound in different colors, so that they might suit his various moods and the fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control” (Wilde 93).

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1121 Words | 5 Pages

Take ownership of your actions and man up and deal with the consequences. Lord Henry was partially responsible for Dorian’s corruption but Dorian cannot lay all the blame on him. Dorian’s the one who confused love with lust; lead a girl on, then broke her heart. He was the cause of her suicide and he was delusional to think that her life was just a fiction of his imagination. He never knew what love was because the only thing he ever knew was art.

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760 Words | 4 Pages

Cruelty plays a vital role in developing the plot and characters in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Throughout the piece, many acts of cruelty are displayed from Dorian Gray and others that show truly who they are how they've developed from it. Dorian takes on a huge change in his morals and standards because of the influence taken in from others. This influence causes him to only care about his own youth and vanity, resulting in a huge change of personality. The more Dorian becomes influenced by Lord Henry and the painting, the crueler he becomes

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1115 Words | 5 Pages

The researcher decides Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned to be the objects of the study on inferiority and superiority complex causing hedonistic lifestyle in main character. The first reason, both of literary works cover the changing of each life of the main character, society and ultimately the individual. Second, they both share the same social background of the main character in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian, displays a well-respected young man. He doesn’t recognize his own beauty until he sees it reflected in Basil’s portrait, and, once he does, it’s all too late. While Anthony in The Beautiful and Damned is illustrates reaching pleasure as the lifestyle and it becomes a habit.

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725 Words | 3 Pages

At the end of the book, he has lost all of his innocence and gained cruelty. Bad company and objects are what causes Dorian Gray 's corruption. Basil Hallward is a painter who wants to paint Dorian 's picture. He is a quiet and unchangeable man. When he first meets Dorian, they talk about how it was destiny for them to meet.

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750 Words | 3 Pages

Dorian Gray is a handsome, narcissistic young man enthralled by Lord Henry 's new enjoyment. He satisfies in every pleasure of moral and immoral life ultimately heads to death. Henry tells

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2219 Words | 9 Pages

Lord Henry’s painting showed Dorian the reality of life and all the sins he had committed. With the picture, Dorian destroyed it plus his own life because he could not bear the fact that his beauty was going to fade. In addition, Henry influences Dorian by manipulating him because; he carries on with his idea of remaining youthful. This is evident when he says, "To get back to my youth, I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable" (Liebman 300). Lord Henry had everything to do with Dorian’s obsession of wanting to remain young especially with the picture and his philosophy.

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1108 Words | 5 Pages

Another theme illustrated through Wilde’s use of motifs and symbols is the theme of superficiality. The theme of superficiality can be understood as a sense of the superficial view of outer beauty that is shown in the work. It relates to the concept of remaining young, which is an important factor of what is shown in the novel. This is an important part of the novel because outer beauty plays a bigger role for Dorian, than inner beauty does. In the beginning of the novel, Lord Henry and Dorian have a conversation that focuses on the topic of youth and Dorian 's outer beauty – Lord Henry mentions the fact that Dorian has a beautiful face, and later during this conversation, Lord Henry states that: “youth is the only thing worth having…”

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1283 Words | 6 Pages

As a writer one is greatly influenced by their personal experiences with social, historical, and cultural context within their specific time period. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was shaped by the aspects of the world around him. The themes of the text are are influenced by morality in the Victorian Era. Throughout the Victorian Era a deeper movement was also prominent in London called Aestheticism. Aestheticism is the worship of beauty and self-fulfillment.

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828 Words | 4 Pages

All actions have an inverse action that can be acquired. The novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey, significantly portrays the inverse options in life. Superficial happiness is the leading cause for double standards. The main character preservers through an abundance of difficult situations, while retaining his beauty. This is all due to his double life that he has come accustomed to living.

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493 Words | 2 Pages

In the book, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Dorian can be seen as a modern day narcissus. The whole novel portrays characteristics from the Greek mythological story about Narcissus and his love for himself. Dorian and Narcissus can be seen in the same way, for they both have narcissistic personalities. Their personalities is what carry the plot throughout the two stories and have such an impact on what happens. The Picture of Dorian Gray and the tale of Narcissus both show the common plot of a young male being in love with himself, which in the end, results in the tragedy of the two stories.

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829 Words | 4 Pages

Basil has come to ask Dorian about all the horrible rumors surrounding him, and hopes they turn out false. Basil also asks about the portrait and why Dorian hides it, so Dorian decides to show him his “to see your soul. But only God can do that—you shall see it yourself to-night!”. Dorian then takes Basil to see his picture, which at first cannot be recognized by Basil, but soon he realizes the true horror of the situation, “an exclamation of horror broke out from the painter’s lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him” (Wilde 113). Dorians soul has become rotten to the core with selfishness and pleasure, mainly because of Lord Henry’s poisonous words.

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1087 Words | 5 Pages

In the early 18th century a new genre of fiction prose, named "Gothic Novel" was introduced. The term ”Gothic” used to refer to the German tribe of the Goths. The Gothic novel spread over the 19th century and had the popular theme of haunted places such as castles, crypts, gloomy monasteries; supernatural elements having the role to intensify the atmosphere. The characteristic motifs of the gothic genre were the strange places, the supernatural, magic objects, monsters, demons, science used for bad purposes. And many of them appear also in "The Picture of Dorian Gray".

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937 Words | 4 Pages

As the portrait significantly becomes more hideous, Dorian gradually loses his mind. The reader understands that what eventually leads Dorian to kill Basil Hallward, the only true friend he has, is the constant reminder of the evil found at the heart of Dorian’s nature, as represented by the portrait. In Dorian doing so, the reader realises that not only does Dorian kill Basil, he also kills his only chance of redemption of his soul. The reader realises that the statement that Dorian had expressed earlier in the story was the truth: “Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now.”

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