Basil accuses Lord Henry of causing all this turmoil, but Lord Henry says that he has merely brought forth the true Dorian. Basil decides to destroy the portrait rather than have it upset the lives of the three men, but Dorian stops him. He reminds Lord Henry that he trusts him not to influence Dorian further.

Basil explains how he met Dorian at Lady Brandon’s home. He felt terror upon first seeing Dorian because he sensed that the young man’s personality was so powerful that it could absorb him. Because Basil worries that the public will detect his personal and artistic idolatry of Gray, he will not exhibit the portrait.

Unlike Lord Henry — and now — Dorian, Basil is a relatively unassuming, decent man. He has come to see Dorian because he is genuinely concerned about his young friend who has built quite a chilling reputation for himself in the past eighteen years.

Dorian asks Basil to make a drawing of Sibyl, and Basil agrees to try making the portrait. Dorian reminds Basil of his promise never to exhibit the portrait and asks why he has changed his mind. Basil explains that he didn’t want to exhibit the portrait for fear that others might see his feelings for Dorian in it.

As Lord Henry leads Dorian to abandon himself to the pursuit of pleasure and indulgence in vice, Dorian is happy to be his protégé. Dorian goes on to accept all Lord Henry’s theories about life, love and pleasure. Dorian is aware that it is Lord Henry who is the corrupting influence of his life.

In anger, Dorian blames his fate on Basil and stabs him to death. Dorian then calmly blackmails an old friend, the scientist Alan Campbell, into using his knowledge of chemistry to destroy the body of Basil Hallward. Alan later kills himself.

James’s Gazette, that Dorian Gray “is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment” (Wilde 248).

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, he critiques both his own and Dorian’s double life as well as the double lives of hypocrisy many Victorians were forced to live. The message is that the double life is destructive to oneself and others.

point of view The point of view is third person, omniscient. The narrator chronicles both the objective or external world and the subjective or internal thoughts and feelings of the characters. There is one short paragraph where a first-person point of view becomes apparent; in this section, Wilde becomes the narrator.

The legend tells of a learned doctor who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge and magical abilities. Although Dorian Gray never contracts with the devil, his sacrifice is similar: he trades his soul for the luxury of eternal youth.

Immortality: After having his soul trapped within a painting, Dorian gained immortality. He does not age and seems to be immune to all conventional illnesses, diseases, viruses and infections.

Dorian Gray was clearly based on a living person, a member of Wilde’s literary homosexual circle in the early 1890s when the story was first published. If Wilde’s fiction is strange, the real life story of John Gray, Dorian’s original, is even more bizarre.

Wilde used The Picture of Dorian Gray as his autobiography claiming, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be- in other ages perhaps.” Not only was this book banned because of the sexual undertones, it eventually helped send Wilde to a couple of years of …

No. In the novel Dorian is actually quite transfixed with his painting and views it often. It’s essentially a physical manifestation of his soul.

We are told that Dorian murders Basil on his 38th birthday in November, and the novel ends before the following November, so he is still 38. Dorian is twenty at the beginning of the novel. At the end of the novel, the ruined woman in the opium den says that Dorian hasn’t changed in 18 years, confirming the narrator.

In short,you will not have any difficulty reading ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ if ever you’re someone who despises mammoth books.As a matter of fact, I finished it in 3 days,albeit trying my best not to read it so quickly! Yep!

Eighteen years pass. Dorian’s reputation suffers in circles of polite London society, where rumors spread regarding his scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept him because he remains young and beautiful.

The portrait has become so hideous that Basil is only able to identify it as his work by the signature that he affixes to all his portraits. Basil is horrified and beseeches Dorian to pray for salvation. In anger, Dorian blames his fate on Basil and stabs him to death.

In this rather lengthy chapter, the narrator describes the profound influence the yellow book has on Dorian—it totally changes his life. The book involves a young Parisian hero, who reminds Dorian a lot of himself. The hero, like Dorian, was once incredibly beautiful, but suddenly loses his beauty.

After murdering Basil, Dorian feels how corrupt he has become, he feels guilt and tries to push the emotion away. He knew his soul was “sick to death”, he knew he could not be forgiven so he tries to forget (Wilde 117).

Lord Henry appears in The Picture of Dorian Gray as a mentor and could be viewed as a paternal figure to the young and susceptible Dorian, however, in contrast to Basil, Henry appears almost entirely as a negative influence in Dorian’s life, driving him to live a morally wrong life.

Basil is the painter of Dorian Gray’s portrait. From the beginning of their relationship on, he feels that he found his muse in Dorian, who, in Basil’s eyes, embodies the Greek ideal of harmony between body and soul (DG 13).