The inner battle of Dorian Gray with his moral conscience

In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Dorian is so obsessed with his own beauty that he makes a wish to have his own soul put in the portrait, of himself, and let that grow old while he stays forever unchanged. In this excerpt we learn that Dorian has now realized that his wish has come true. He can’t differentiate between right and wrong because of his egocentric personality. Hence the reason he treats Sybil Vane so cruelly. He appears to be having a change of heart throughout this passage, while he is realizing what he has done. However it’s not because of Sybil Vanes feelings, its to prevent his precious portrait from changing. Thus in The Picture of Dorian Gray Dorian has an inner battle with his moral conscience.

To begin with, Dorian has given the impression that he has fallen in love with some actress called Sybil Vane. In reality he has only had affection for her as an actress, but not her as a person. So that one day that Sybil Vane acted very poorly, he had lost all feelings for her and decided to call it all, as in the marriage, off in an insensitive manner. When reflecting on his actions he noticed that maybe that was why the picture had changed in its structure. Regarding his hubris personality he decides to go and apologize to see if he were to correct his wrong doings that maybe the picture, which is his soul, would return back to normal. In an effort to try and do so, he has gotten the news that Sybil Vane has committed suicide. He is a little hurt at first but then his beloved friend Lord Henry has convinced him to see this as a mere tragic experience and nothing more.

In this piece the overall tone of the story is projected by diction, whether positive of negative. Given by the word choices of suffered, terrible, pain, and torture, the piece seems to have the sense of revenge lingering on throughout. This passage is detailed and filled with imagery, which also helps set the scene. In the statement “in the dim arrested light... the face appeared to him to be a little changed” shows how the light reflects the change in the picture. Since the picture is the main reason for Dorian’s ego-centric personality, by showing him how beautiful he actually is, would it make him hate his soul? Given the fact that the picture mirrors his soul, with every bad action he does, the portrait changes and ends up becoming grotesque and unbearable. He ends up hating it because it changes his beautiful picture into a hideous and constant commemoration of his bad soul. Being that it changes with his moral decisions this foreshadows that Dorian will keep doing bad things just to see how his picture changes.

To finish things off, Dorian has shown to be a self-centered and narcissistic personality. Dorian has shown characteristics of being very easily influenced by others. This is shown perfectly by the relationship between him and Lord Henry. Lord Henry gives Dorian the gift of an ivory cupid mirror, which

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