The Picture of Dorian Gray

The artistic novel of Oscar Wild, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has paved the path along which one can empathize with a cold-blooded killer, and in it, the details of a killer’s mind have been delineated flawlessly. Dorian Gray is first introduced as a juvenile and playful teenager, who is obsessed with his looks and takes pride in his youth at the presence of two older men. His dark and light sides are adroitly exposed to the reader, and at the beginning he is given a mirror of his soul, a picture that reflects his virtues and iniquities. By blaming his closest for his faults and failures he refrains from facing his truth, unaware that if one keeps from facing and accepting the truth, it will eventually hit the man right between the eyes. At the end, the book reveals the last bits of Doran Gray’s reality, yet leaves one question for the reader to wonder about, “Was Dorian Gray forgiven?”

The light side of Dorian Gray is rather immature and naïve, and so, incapable of even seeing the wiles of evil. Basil, representing this side, is not bright enough to keep his tongue form revealing his relationship with the young Adonis he’s come to take interest in to the evil side. He is a man of wishful thinking and fails to see the perfect flaws of Dorian until it is too late. The obsessed genius painter is indeed blindly infatuated with Dorian Gray, and so his creation of the “mysterious” picture is a work of obsessive desire amalgamated into blindness to the truth of the man he adores so poetically. He reminds one of a woman who stays by the side of her alcoholic husband, a reprobate, no matter how badly he treats her, with steadfast affection or maybe addiction or fear. So is his art a work of love or desire? Because apparently this unwise being does not even know the truth of his beloved’s soul, let alone love him. Considering that he is the good side of Dorian, he is a complete failure in enlightening the vain fool.

On the other hand, the book depicts a very degenerate but cultivated–not necessarily mature–manifestation of evil. Lord Henry is the main role model of Dorian Gray. He believes pleasure to be the most important thing in life, and his “philosophical” words are fancy enough to hypnotize Dorian into being more responsive to him rather than Basil. Just like most bad people, he is what we call “all talk and no action”. He claims that he does not believe in influencing or being influenced, yet cannot stop designing the movements of the strings attached to Dorian. He’s read every book in the library and preaches everyone about life, but fails to make the right choices in his own marriage. He is simply unhappy. It’s not surprising that one who chooses to follow this person grows old to be miserable and unhappy himself, that is Dorian Gray. Lord Henry is the friend and everyday companion of Doran all along, but also the leader to his fall.

The protagonist, he too, is immature and vain. He is immature, because he does not once stand up by his mistakes, and in a circuitous way, manages to make others seem guilty of his sins, and actually believes that he’s fooling somebody. First, he blames Lord Henry for the bitter death of his first lover, Sybil Vane. Second, he gratuitously castigates the artist of his greatest acquisition, and to justify the fact that he “truly” takes credence in his own lies, he stabs him to death. And in the end, he actually stands there blaming and hating the animate portrait, because he’s come to the conclusion that the picture has been the bane of his existence all along. And, as it was mentioned, Dorian is vain. He is madly mesmerized by the gift of nature, his fashionable physical beauty, and his own scintillating charm, so absorbed that he neglects to discover the true meaning of youth and beauty. He has condemned himself to utter narcissism, and when Lord Henry steps in and encourages that mad sense of pride, he is charmed by him in the most peculiar, or perhaps, typical way. He is swallowed by his remarks about life and youth so deeply that he chastises the portrait, the masterpiece of the good side, severely and asks the devil to take his soul in return for eternal beauty.

The book leaves the question to ponder about, were the actions of Dorian Gray condoned and justified? Was he forgiven, even though he didn’t ask for repentance? The consummate art of Oscar Wild puts the reader into the shoes of a criminal, a murderer. It lets us see both sides of him, and gives soul to what we address daily “a soulless killer”. He delicately paved the path along which we empathize with Dorian Gray. If he had had the time to write about every dead and living culprit there is, we might feel for and forgive each and every one of them as human beings. But he did not, and in fact, forgiveness is not easily afforded. Although, he’s undoubtedly done the best to prove that Dorian was not completely black and not purely white, but that Dorian was gray.

Latest reviews