The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Struggle to Stay
Young Forever
Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray struggles with the desire to stay forever young. Because of all the hardships he experiences throughout his life in order to achieve this he loses his innocence along the way and eventually all of what he has done catches up to him and leads to his suicide. To him, youth is the only thing that has any importance and he does all that he can in order to maintain youthful without understand the repercussions of his actions until it is too late. One scene that clearly displays Dorian’s decision to choose beauty over his innocence is when Dorian brings his friend Basil to the room where he keeps his portrait. He shows Basil the portrait and how hideous it has become despite Dorian’s unchanged appearance. Basil then realizes that the painting was a work of his own and then he asks how it has become that way. Dorian explains that gave up his soul for eternal beauty. Basil then tries to convince Dorian to pray for forgiveness because he believes that the painting is an awful lesson but Dorian claims it is too late. Once Dorian looks at what has become of him in the portrait, he grabs a knife and stabs his friend to death. The next day he is still bitter about how Basil reacted to his portrait; the lack of remorse clearly shows that he has no innocence left to him. This shows that Dorian is relentless by trying to stay young forever because it shows that he favors his appearance more than his friends. Basil was the man that gave the painting life, and in the end it brought his own life to an end because Dorian became obsessed with it. His innocence was lost with this act, and he just continues on with his life as if it was nothing. He becomes a changed man, and not for the better. Another scene in which Dorian loses his innocence by choosing beauty is when Dorian goes to see his fiancé perform and notices how bad she is that night. When he confronts her about it she claims she no longer can connect to the roles she