Dorian Gray Assessment #2

Rachael Kerr
AP English 11
March 30, 2010
Dorian Gray Assessment #2
Dorian Gray Characterization
Dorian Gray begins as an innocent, beautiful young man whose loss of conscience twists him into a corrupt yet equal beautiful being.
It could be said that Dorian Gray is the most controversial character in the novel, considering he never receives punishment for the unjust way he acts. But his personality is not static; Dorian was completely different in the beginning of the novel. Dorian was an extremely handsome young man, beaming with the stainless cloth of boyhood. It is through Basil that we first learn how impressionable Dorian really is; Basil does not want Lord Henry to meet Dorian, because he knows how Henry will act to Dorian. When Henry meets Dorian, he begins to influence Dorian in such a way that will continue throughout the novel: “the few words that Basil’s friend had said to him […] had touched some secret chord” (21). After seeing the most magnificent portrait of himself by Basil, Henry teases Dorian about the fleeting tendancy of youth, to which Dorian pleas: “If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! […] I would give my soul for that!” (28). Upon making this deadly bargain, Dorian never receives the harsh consequences of age or sin that traditionally write itself across one’s face. After realizing this lack of repercussions, Dorian loses all sense of morality, wishing only to seek pleasure, and disregarding his portrait growing evermore grotesque: “What did it matter what happened to the colored image on the canvas? He would be safe” (110). Dorian takes a dark turn, and kills Basil in cold blood as he attempted to show Dorian his wrongs. Nearing the end, Finally, being driven to the brink of insanity due to haunting phantoms of everything he has done, Dorian attempts to completely to rid himself of all guilt: “[the painting] has been like conscience to him […] he would destroy it” (228). He stabs the painting, and his servants find him “withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage” (229) with the same knife he used in his heart. In life he wished for eternal life, but true immortality only exists in death.
Dorian Gray is an incubus, a mythological demon that lures young women in using their aesthetics as a way to get the women to have sex with them to reproduce; Dorian is abuses his good looks for his own selfish gain, luring in the esteem less and simple minded.
A parallel would be to the main female character in The Hot Chick; within the first few scenes, she is shown using her good looks and sexual appeal to get away with not paying for food.

Lord Henry Characterization
Lord Henry is a overbearing, manipulative, yet light hearted man who lacks concern for those around him who might be affected by his paradoxical musings.
Lord Henry is a very influential speaker with an air of interest surrounding him, as demonstrated by Dorian: “There was something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating” (Wilde 23). Lord Henry speaks often without thought or a filter; sometimes in paradox, other times witticisms, then at times in cynicism. Although what he says might be queer and harmful, his listeners are fascinated and beg for more: “You must come and explain that to me some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds like a fascinating theory” (185). But Henry uses his listener’s interest to invite them close to him, so as he will be able observer them more closely. He regards those who are close enough to him to be considered ‘friends’ as ‘test subjects’. However, only those who can see through the haze he creates are the ones who truly understand him: “Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked” (182).
Lord Henry is the Id of your brain, the pleasure principle; it revolves around what is wanted, when it is wanted, and devotes itself to getting that; he reveres himself in Hedonism, looking for nothing more but the fastest road to instant gratification.
A modern day parallel for Lord Henry would be to Germany’s Adolf Hitler; Hitler had property on the thin line between genius and insanity, and everyone around him knew that, yet he was such a fantastically motivating speaker he was able to turn an entire nation to genocide; Lord Henry was able to twist a naïve, innocent boy into a immoral, Hedonistic murderer.