Theme Of Appearance In The Picture Of Dorian Gray

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the author, Oscar Wilde, uses the major theme of appearance to analyze the relationship between the outer and inner beauty of Dorian Gray, himself. The novel presents itself with a painting of the very handsome man, Dorian Gray, who is one of the most beautiful people to ever be seen in the world, but throughout the novel, it is revealed that Gray may be beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, he is repulsing. The dichotomy of Grays’ inner and outer beauty paints almost as beautiful of a painting as the one painted for him in the novel. Throughout the novel, Gray does many things that would get him in trouble normally, but in this case, his appearance is too perfect for anyone to think he could do anything wrong. This poses the question: do we always think that beautiful people are good people? From a personal standpoint, I would quickly deny this because it

However, in the novel, it takes time for some to realize this about Dorian and many are fooled at first and continue to be fooled, but some figure it out like one of the characters in the novel, Basil. In an exchange between Basil and Dorian, he finally realizes that Dorian is not truly what his outer beauty says of him, “Something has changed you completely. You look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come down to my studio to sit for his picture . . . Now, I don’t know what has come over you. You talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you” (The Picture of Dorian Gray Wilde 128). He later goes on to beg for “the Dorian Gray I used to know” (128), which suggests that for once, Gray has been