Dorian Gray Morally Ambiguous Character Analysis

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Moral Ambiguous Characters Throughout Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the moral ambiguity of the central character, Dorian Gray, becomes more and more distinct. The story starts with Dorian being venerated by the artist Basil Hallward, and throughout the story the reader learns of Gray’s several wrong doings. Meeting Lord Henry almost straight away negatively influenced Dorian. He had started out blameless and innocent, but by the conclusion had been the cause of numerous deaths, all because of his selfish wish to stay beautiful forever. “His actions show a character who insists the soul is real, but loves the gaping chasm between the beauty of his body and the corruption of his soul” [ (Wilde 105-123) ]. Because of these factors, Dorian Gray is a morally ambiguous character. When the reader first encounters Dorian, they discover that he has such virtue and purity about him that Hallward reveres him and craves to constantly paint him. By continuously telling Gray how handsome he is, Basil has made him believe that beauty is the most essential facet to life. Dorian begins to panic when Lord Henry tells him that he will not always be…show more content…
When he tells his fiancée, Sibyl Vane, that he does not want to see her anymore, she becomes despondent and kills herself. Her suicide gives rise to his guilty and remorseful feelings. He considers her death his fault, and there had to have been something he could’ve done to prevent her death. When Lord Henry hears of Dorian’s culpability, he swiftly saturates Dorian’s head with his philosophies and repudiates anything more of how Sibyl’s death is Gray’s burden to bear and to think of her death as a “perfect artistic representation of undying love” (Wilde 79-89). Although Dorian rapidly surrenders to Lord Henry’s words, the idea that he felt rueful shows that within Gray, there is the capability of

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