In my opinion, it’s a story about people’s trying to find the real essence of
life. Lord Henry and Dorian Gray got acquainted in their friend—Basil Hallward’s home and soon became friends also. In their first meet, Lord Henry told Dorian his wonderful
beauty and marvelous
youth and wants him to be a visible symbol of a new Hedonism. Dorian was startled at those words and soon confirmed by the
picture of himself finished by Basil. At the moment, the notion that he want to exchange with the portrait for eternal youth at the cost of anything occurred to him. After that, Lord Henry and Dorian often stayed together and Dorian felt himself couldn’t help telling Lord Henry things, for Lord Henry had a curious influence on him. Once Dorian went to a tawdry theatre, he found a beautiful actress—Sibyl Vane there and fell in love with her at once. Then came the news that he had made an engagement with the
girl. Basil disapproved the engagement, for he thought the girl might grade Dorian’s nature and ruin his intellect. But Lord Henry said he wouldn’t interfere with it because Dorian’s personality fascinated him. Sibyl Vane was an innocent and romantic girl and was simply mad of her Prince of Charming, which made her behaved quiet poorly when Dorian and his friends came to see her performance. All of the three gentlemen were disappointed, and Dorian even claimed that he wouldn’t love Sibyl any more. Those remarks made the girl extremely sad, and finally she had swollen some poison to end her life. When returning to home, Dorian’s eye incidentally fell on the portrait which showed him his cruelty to the girl. So he decided to write a letter to her to ask for her forgiveness and accuse himself of madness. Just at the moment he finished the letter, Lord Henry Came to visit and brought him the horrible news of Sibyl’s death. Dorian was very shocked and sorrow about it, but soon persuaded by his friend to just see it as a real tragedy. The next morning, Basil came to console him, but to have received the reply that what’s happened might as well be forgotten or be seen from a proper artistic point of view. Besides, Basil wanted to have a look at his work, for he’s going to exhibit in Paris. He used to say that he found too much of himself in it and won’t display it, but now he understood that form and color just tell us form and color. Dorian refused his require strongly with threaten of breaking off. Dorian decided that the picture must be hidden away in case someone else will discover his secret. So he called someone to help him move it into the room which he used as play-room and study before. Often, on returning home from one of mysterious prolonged absences, he would creep upstairs to the room to compare the evil and aging face with his own young face with quickened sense of pleasure. From then on, he had begun a new life as Lord Henry once told him as a new Hedonism. On his thirty-eight birthday, when he walked home, he met Basil on pavement. Basil was led into the library before his leave for Paris. During the conversation, Basil asked him why he got a tarnished name and enquired to se his soul. So Dorian showed him his work and the hideous change of it. Dorian thought it was the painter and his picture which had marred him, so with madness he got a knife and killed his friend. After that, in order to eliminate those evidences disadvantage to him, he compelled Alan Campbell to remove Basil’s body with some chemical substance and burnt Basil’s coat and bag. When he felt quite safe, however, one evening in an opium hen on a quay, he met with James Vine—Sibyl’s brother, who’s going to take revenge on him for his sister’s death. Dorian succeed in deceiving him that he can’t be the people the sailor’s looking for because he’s much younger than that man should be. But once he’s hunting, one of his friends shot a hare as well as a man unfortunately. To his surprise, that was just James Vine. He believed this time he's absolutely safe. And as he came to exam the picture for another time, he decided to ruin the source of his sin and corruption. At the same time, his life was due to an end.
The three main characters in the story have completely different nature. First, Lord Henry Wotton’s an odd misanthropist. He seems to like to think of all those valuable things that our society adore (loyalty, selflessness etc.) useless. In his theories and commitments about life, he always said something wicked and show his cynicism. When he saw Dorian’s excellent beauty and marvelous youth, he tried to teach him the new Hedonism to find the real essence of life. That’s a quite dangerous experiment which finally ruined the perfect young lad. And it was he who told Dorian to regard beauty and youth higher than anything else in life. So he should be partly responsible for Dorian’s corruption. The painter Basil Hallward was a brilliant artist, but not also a successful person in his life. He had put too much into his art, so there was little left in himself. When he met Dorian, he adored his beauty and personality, and tried his best to reveal them on his canvas. Finally he had finished the wonderful portrait of his ideal, but it didn’t occur to him that his work would make Dorian realize the transience of beauty and youth and become the source of his sins. There is no doubt that he had put mush love and adornment of his friend in it, but Dorian didn’t understand it but hated him as he believed that the painter and his picture was the cause of his own corruption. He always loves his friend and died in the end in an artist’s way. Dorian’s transient life was a really dramatic tragedy. He came out as a unspotted young ideal and soon badly influenced by the misanthropist because of his puerility. In his latter part of life, he became a completely hedonist. The stipulation he had made with his picture caused his life vein. Everyone will grow old and his beauty gradually fades, that is a necessary part without which our life will be incomplete. So eternal beauty and youth is just meaningless. In tracing for sensations, Dorian still didn’t completely disregard the morality of society. Although he seemed to turn a deaf ear to his tarnished name scandals in the society, he didn’t want to burden the responsibilities of his friends’ corruptions. In his heat, what he wants is just to remain young and beautiful and Lord Henry told him to combine it with hedonism, which is an extremely poisonous idea. Indeed he was always aware of his own corruption and had a desire to become good. But the influence of Lord Henry and the portrait finally ruined him cruelly. In the end, maybe he regretted of his choice. But it was too late, since everyone of us can’t have a second life to avoid those mistakes we’ve made.
More reviews about the Analysis of The Picture of Dorian Gray