Influence, Corruption and Conscience in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, explores the themes of influence, corruption and conscience. “The obvious influence of Lord Henry upon Dorian shows how one may corrupt another to such an extent that one's own conscience withers and dies”(Weintraub 116).
Basil Hallward, a painter, knows the corruptive influence that Lord Henry can impose upon his model, Dorian Gray. Basil does not want Lord Henry to even meet Dorian because he is afraid that Dorian will be influenced and ruined. Basil begs Henry by saying, "Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvelous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him" (Wilde 10). Right from the beginning Wilde begins to show what type of person Lord Henry is. Lord Henry's influences pose a threat to Dorian. Basil is well aware of this.
Through Basil Hallward, Wilde implies that Dorian can easily be corrupted. However, Dorian tries to assure Basil that he is not being influenced. He states that Lord Henry "has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don't believe anything he has told me" (Wilde 15). The only reason Dorian does not believe Lord Henry is because Lord Henry does not complement him. Wilde infers that if this is the only reason for Dorian to doubt Henry, Dorian could therefore be influenced in some other way. Overall, Wilde shows how a person may deny the warning signs of being influenced.
Lord Henry slowly begins to influence Dorian, intentionally allowing his corruptive...
... middle of paper ...
...the duality of any relationship. This is true of any relationship, in any society, "for even the most obvious case of corruption or the most straightforward relationship carries more to it than the eye can see"(Woodcock 49).
Works Cited
Belford, Barbara. Oscar Wilde. New York; Random House, 2000
Freidman, Jonathan (edited). Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1996.
Pearson, Hesketh (edited). Essays By Oscar Wilde. New York: Books For Libraries Press, 1972.
Weintraub, Stanley (edited). Literary Criticism of Oscar Wilde. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1968.
Woodcock, George. The Paradox of Oscar Wilde. London-New York: T.V. Boardman and Co., Ltd., 1950.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oxford University Press, New York. 1994
"Pink Monkey.' www.pinkmonkey.com 15 Jan. 2001
...years. Lord Henry enjoyed influencing Dorian: "He was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation" (Wilde 51). What makes Lord Henry's influence worse is his utter lack of understanding how harmful it was, and, how little he really knew Dorian, evidenced towards the end when Dorian practically tells him he murdered Basil.
Although Wilde halts short of stating that Basil and Lord Henry have sexual feelings for Dorian , the language he uses to describe their devotion for Dorian is unmistakably the language of deep, romantic intimacy. “Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?”. “Every day. I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t see him everyday. He is absolutely necessary to me”. This common motif of homoerotic bonds between men plays a large role in structuring the novel. Basils painting is born from his adoration of Dorians beauty , comparatively Lord Henry is overcome with desire to seduce Dorian. This sense of camaraderie between men fits into Wildes aesthetic values, for it returns him to his past where the philosophy of beauty was not only the basis of society but fundamental to culture. As a homosexual living in an intolerant society, Wilde asserted this philosophy in order to justify his own lifestyle.
French, A.L " Imprisonment: The Case of Great Expectations." Discussions of Charles Dickens, 82-92. William R. Clark, ed. Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 1961.
Abrams, M.H., The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition, Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1993
Wilde says that Dorian’s journey begins with Ordinary World. He is a young and good looking male. He has a normal life till he met Basil and Lord Henry. He now receives the Call of Adventure. When he met Basil at a party, they become friends and everything is still good until he met Lord Henry. He captured the imagination of Basil and for Lord Henry is how he knows that Dorian can do anything with his looks and perfection. Basil made a portrait of Dorian. Lord Henry made Dorian realize that he is not doing anything wrong and he is perfect no matter what. This is how
Innocence may be easily corrupted by a malignant outside influence. The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray shows that corruption and bad influence may be easy to pursue. Author Oscar Wilde attempts to highlight that corruption may not come in the form of materials, but also in the forms of friends, society, etc. Dorian’s youth is easily corrupted by the influence of not only Lord Henry but also by the society and the substances which he chooses to use and abuse now and then. The corruption takes a toll on Dorian’s behavior significantly, and the readers notice that it ultimately leads to his demise. In this novel, we see the corruption of Dorian’s unscathed innocence and his beauty by various outside sources.
He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. ”(Wilde 13). The words of an honored role model can easily persuade even the purest of hearts into the darkness of crime and evil, such as Dorian Gray. At this moment, Gray falls victim to the flourishing words of Lord Henry, who manipulates Gray from a timid and shining boy to nothing but a shallow man who commits capital crimes to conceal his secret.
Wilde, Oscar, and Michael Patrick. Gillespie. The Picture of Dorian Gray: Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds, Reviews and Reactions, Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2007. Print.
...oet who was able to adapt his experience and his religious values into his poem such as the “Canonization”. He was also able to give his readers hidden meanings that helped him to compare to his own life experience and throughout his poem he gives us the meaning to why he choose a word such canonization, in his own term of definition he is actually talking about his love.In turn Donne is a poet who can truely
Author Jane Austen had porttryal of arrogance that existed in upper class society. She uses Emma as a representative of the faults and lack of values of her society. Just as Emma contains these many faults, the upper class society as a whole also contains these many faults. Additionally, in Emma, Austen depicts the distorted views of gentility. Austen depicts her own message of true gentility by creating characters of differing class ranks. Bradbury relates that the characters that are socially high seem to be morally inferior and those of lower rank are "elevated" by their actions (Austen 81). Austen's development of characters, especially Emma, is very effective in relaying her message about the snobbery and lack of gentility that existed in upper class society.
By making many references to the Bible, John Donne's Holy Sonnets reveal his want to be accepted and forgiven by God. A fear of death without God's forgiveness of sins is conveyed in these sonnets. Donne expresses extreme anxiety and fright that Satan has taken over his soul and God won't forgive him for it or his sins. A central theme of healing and forgiveness imply that John Donne, however much he wrote about God and being holy, wasn't such a holy man all of the time and tried to make up for it in his writing.
Dorian Gray starts off as a young, beautiful man who is loved by many. Because of this, he is all that Basil Hallward, a painter, and Lord Henry Wotton, a nobleman, ever think about. However, they have different ideas on what they want Dorian to become. Their conflicting influences become one of the main conflicts of the book, and this is noticed by Basil. He says, “Don’t spoil him. Don’t try to influence him. Your influence would be bad.” Basil influences Dorian’s choices and actions the most at the beginning of the novel. This is evidenced when Basil says, “He is all my art to me now.” Basil wants Dorian to devote himself to love and selflessness in order to live a happy life. Dorian follows this advice and falls in love with Sibyl Vane, and she becomes another conflict for the novel. He is willing to sacrifice anything for Sibyl, which pleases
In conclusion, it has been reiterated that Lord Henry's influence, the changes in Dorian, and the immorality of the yellow book further enforced The Picture of Dorian Gray as a moral book. Oscar Wilde allows for those who could understand the real meaning of the novel by comprehending the importance of these three things to discern that he fully intended on writing this novel as a moral book.
In analyzing Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, concepts such as influence and the origin of evil in Dorian Gray play an exceptionally valuable role in understanding the motives of the characters. Although some critics argue characters such as Lord Kelso significantly influence Dorian’s corruption, Lord Henry Wotton’s toxic personality undeniably impacts Dorian the most. Throughout the course of the novel, Lord Henry remains the ultimate source of evil and uses deception and persuasion to poison Dorian from a naïve boy to a destructive monster.
Set in the late 19th Century, Oscar Wilde wrote his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a story about debauchery and corruption of innocence and well known as a "Gothic melodrama. " Violent twists and a sneaky plot make this novel a distinct reflection of human pride and corruption. Before we examine the quality of the error that Dorian Gray commits, we should first examine his friends and their relation to him, because Dorian falls into this error with a little help from his friends. 1. What is the difference between a. and a The relationship between Dorian Gray and Basil Hallward.