In determining the difference between right and wrong throughout history, there has always been a haze of gray, mixing the white with the black. One knows what is right and what is wrong, but that does not mean he or she will always make the correct decision. Humans will always have a devil sitting on one shoulder encouraging sin and an angel sitting on the other shoulder encouraging morals. No one listens to just one of these voices; there is usually much contemplation over which inner voice to listen to, and most likely, a different moral voice is chosen each time. The human mind is much too complex to be stereotyped as either morally good or morally evil, because it is much more than one or the other- it is both. The common adage, “How does …show more content…
153). Dorian often stared at his portrait in disgust of how it displayed his sins and scarred soul. Just the same, he would stand in front of his portrait with a mirror, happy and full of pride. He even “smil[ed] with secret pleasure at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own” (p. 153). However, the more he viewed the portrait, the more crimes he seemed to commit. His greatest sin was the murder of his “friend”, Basil. When Dorian showed Basil the grotesque portrait, Basil was horrified and his initial reaction was to pray for forgiveness with Dorian. However, Dorian was so swollen with bitterness and hate that when he looked at the portrait against the wall, he was lost in the evil of the painting and “as though it had been suggested to him by the painting” (p. 173), repeatedly stabbed Basil with a knife, killing him. Dorian showed no remorse while looking at his dead friend; instead, “he felt strangely calm” (p. 174). Dorian sinned through this murder and through the covering of this murder. After a few days though, his conscience reappeared and he grew nervous. His nervousness culminated after encountering Sibyl Vane’s angry brother, James, who wanted to kill Dorian. When James was shot in a hunting