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Ignorance In The Picture Of Dorian Gray Essay

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Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, author Oscar Wilde consistently discusses the idea of ignorance. Ignorance is an overarching theme that affects both the thoughts of primary characters and their actions. A character greatly affected by ignorance is Dorian Gray. As his policies on life change due to his eternal youth, the primary character of Dorian Gray gradually becomes less and less knowledgeable. During his conversation with Basil, Dorian displays an increase in ignorance caused by his eternal youth through the examples of his ponderings on “serious topics” as well as gossip related to him. During his conversation with Basil, Dorian shows that his eternal youth has led him to be apathetic about topics of importance or seriousness, making him more ignorant. To elaborate, right as Basil walks into Dorian’s house on page 130, Dorian asks Basil to not “talk about anything serious” because “nothing should be [serious]” (Wilde 130). Within this quote, Dorian seems to neither care nor inquire about “serious” topics, demonstrating his increased ignorance. Later in the conversation, after Basil states that he shall be speaking about a relatively serious topic, Dorian exclaims “What is it all about?” while “flinging himself down on the sofa” (Wilde 130). Dorian’s …show more content…

When Basil brings up the topic of rumors surrounding Dorian, Dorian calmly replies that “scandals about myself don’t interest me” and they do not have the “charm of novelty” (Wilde 130). Dorian seems to have lost interest in yet another issue, in this case his public appearance. Additionally, Dorian himself even states that he “[doesn’t] want to know anything about [the rumors]” (Wilde 131). Not only has Dorian shown lack of interest in the topic, but he is also intentionally trying to avoid rumors surrounding himself, resulting in increased

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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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Dorian is portrayed to be pure and beautiful, showing the good side of Dorian that everyone views as perfect and couldn’t harm anyone. In addition, more is learned about Dorian’s spiritual well-being through his portrait as it has a “hideous face”(13) and causes anyone who looks at it to contract a feeling of “disgust and loathing”(13). This portrait acts as a window towards Dorian’s soul as despite appearing perfect on the outside, on the inside Dorian has become morally twisted and lives for his desires. The collapse of Dorian’s soul is further exemplified by Brian Aubrey’s “Critical Essay on ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’.” As he explains, Dorian wanted “to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul”(2) but instead cures his senses but corrupts his soul.

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2. The bulk of Chapter 11 lists, page after page, the various pursuits of Dorian's adult life. In these lists, Wilde shows the result of Dorian's chosen path. The reader sees the peculiar kind of hell that Dorian inhabits because of his pact; Wilde delivers a strong judgement against the dangers of decadence. The lengthy passages describing Dorian's study of perfumes, music, jewels, and embroideries border on being tedious.

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Meanwhile, the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the book itself, was written in response to the culture of hiding and acting more respectably. Wilde’s purpose was to criticize the veneer, that “Victorian morality did not radically transform citizens' behavior but merely forced them to camouflage their baser instincts” (Schmitt). He was against the hypocrisy of the time, and so he wrote about a character living in that state who was brought to

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Henry’s influence, which Basil had foreshadowed, altered the purities of Dorian into an egotistical monster. Dorian Gray’s story is a “conventionally moralistic one, preaching for the power of conscience and against vanity” (Ruddick). The vanity sparked in Dorian Gray aspires Lord Henry’s personal psychological curiosities, and he encourages Gray to follow Henry’s lead without realizing how infamously his experiment had developed. Initially, when Basil had known Dorian Gray the innocent, Basil knew the effects Lord Henry could potentially have on his artistic idol; the artwork of Gray foreshadowed the monster in Gray after Lord Henry’s speech including “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist is, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful” alongside how beauty surpasses any other value in life-- the combination of these two speeches acts as the seed implanted to create the monstrous Dorian Gray (Wilde 13-14).

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