What Is The Portrait Of Dorian Gray Dialectical Journal

Dialectical Journal #1: Literary Analysis Essay
The laburnum gave off a sweet, poisonous smell as it spread around the room, the yellow book was sitting on a table next to a portrait of a old, vile looking man. In the book The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde uses various symbols to convey effects that Dorian and Lord Henry had on people, also he used it to foreshadow later events in the story. The portrait symbolized Dorian’s soul, a yellow book to show the effect that Lord Henry has on Dorian, and a laburnum to symbolize how Dorian was poisonous to many people.
The portrait that Basil Hallward drew of Dorian Gray was significant, it was a mirror to Dorian’s soul. In the beginning, there is a slight change in the portrait, Dorian’s “expression

One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth” (Wilde 66). As the portrait begins to change in appearance, it also begins to reflect his soul and how his life becomes corrupt. The story progresses and Dorian begins to commit more and more crimes that become worse. One day, he brings Basil Hallward into the attic where the portrait is kept and uncovers the portrait to show Basil because he wanted to put it on display. Suddenly, he is overcome with this maddening passion and desire to blame Basil for the portrait that ruined his life. Dorian stabs Basil to death. The next day, he goes back upstairs to check the portrait, and with disgust, he realizes “that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood” (Wilde 127). With every crime that Dorian Gray commits, the portrait shows what he did by shedding blood on his hands and showing lines of cruelty along the wrinkles in his face. Also, the portrait symbolized how the worldly influences tainted Dorian’s innocence, turning him into a corrupted monster. Going back to the beginning of the story again, Basil Hallward paints Dorian Gray, capturing “his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue

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). Dorian Gray had no control over the influence of the yellow book or the effect that Lord Henry held over