The Picture of Dorian Gray

(crime and horror novel)begins with Lord Henry Wotton observingthe artist Basil
Hallward painting the portrait of a handsome man, Dorian Gray. Dorian arrives later and
after hearing Lord Henry’s world view, begins to think beauty is the only worthwhile
aspect of life; so he wishes that the portrait of himself, which Basil is painting, would
grow old on his place. He then starts to live a life of sin and lust under Lord Henry’s
influence, until one day Dorian takes Basil to the portrait and blaming him for his fate he
stabs him to death. In the end Dorian, after trying to live in a good way, finding that the
portrait had become even worse and had kept its senile and sinful appearance, will stab
his portrait with the knife that killed Basil. A servant will find Dorian’s dead body aged
and horrible while the portrait had gained his original appearance.
 characters
Dorian Gray
Lord Henry Wotton
Basil Hallward
 In a letter Wilde said the main characters are reflections of himself:
“ 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.”
 Dorian Gray
He is and handsome, naive and extremely innocent at the beginning of the story, but
then he will be corrupted by Lord Henry.
When he discovers his beauty, he wishes to never change and stars leading a vicious life
following the ideal of beauty and pleasure. He can be considered as a Hedonist, in fact
very often Hedonists are conjoined with psychological egoism, (humans are motivated
only by their self interest). But Dorian’s not a psychological hedonism, is an ethical
hedonism that claims that we should act as to produce our own pleasure.
 Lord henry Wotton
  Harry is Dorian’s tempting devil, because he makes him lose his initial
ingenuousness. He talks through reversed proverbs that have no truth in and are
used just to impress other people. Wilde makes Harry say them because he wants
to underline his condition of fascinating but empty man that has no moral
precepts.