How Does Dorian Gray Show Innocence

The Picture of Dorian Gray Master Theme Paper Dorian Gray’s quest to regain innocence is told through the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Throughout the novel, Dorian Gray experiences a realization and loss of innocence, leading him to see life from a cynical point of view. As Dorian grows old, he realizes the downfall of his cynical lifestyle and wishes to find innocence again. To regain innocence, Dorian has to let go of his greatest trait - his beauty. This is evidenced by the changes in the painting, Dorian’s constant craving for his own beauty, and the alteration in Dorian’s outward beauty upon regaining his innocence. Dorian’s portrait changes drastically from the time it is painted to right before Dorian stabs it.

Dorian sees the finished painting and says he is “... jealous of everything whose beauty does not die” (Wilde 26). Evidently, Dorian has realized how beautiful he is. He now craves his own beauty so much that he is jealous of a painting! Instead of looking at the painting as something to remember his past beauty, Dorian becomes jealous that the painting will always have beauty and he will not. This is when Dorian first prioritizes his beauty above all else. After Dorian saw the painting change in the most drastic way, he began to question his own good deed, and how his actions had affected others. As he thought of Hetty Merton, he believed “Through vanity he had spared her” (Wilde 193). This proves that Dorian had put his own beauty over many important things in life. Instead of marrying Hetty Merton, which Dorian believed would have been bad, his own self-love stopped any possibility of marriage. Generally, people put something as significant as marriage before their own physical appearance. Contrarily, Dorian clearly thought of his own beauty as more important than many other things in life. Evidently, after losing his innocence, Dorian views his beauty as his most important