Beauty And Beauty In The Picture Of Dorian Gray, By Oscar Wilde

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Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, the idea of BEAUTY being the most important aspect of being human, this idea leads to the corruption of an innocent soul. As a matter of fact, this idea being put into the innocent mind can be blamed on one character, Lord Henry. Dorian’s “friend”, Lord Henry drills this idea, beauty over everything, into Dorian’s mind. Being obsessed with psychology, Lord Henry sees his friends as playthings for his social experiments, exploiting the vulnerability found in human nature. Lord Henry’s forwardness with his views on topics and pushing his opinions onto other people causes the corruption and downward spiral of Dorian Gray’s outlook on his world. Lord Henry has many opinions on the world and what he thinks about …show more content…

Throughout the book Lord Henry constantly changes his view on events depending on the person he is addressing. Wanting to be liked by both Basil and Dorian he says to Basil “Genius lasts longer than Beauty” (9). Even though Lord Henry seems to stick by this saying he later on says, “Beauty is a form of Genius- is higher, indeed, than genius.” (16) when speaking to Dorian. Making this small change, his opinion on his view on of beauty and genius he can easily persuade Dorian to believe that beauty is the most important aspect of being alive, and without beauty life is nothing. Lord Henry exploits the fact that Dorian is gullible and narcissistic. Due to Lord Henry’s continuous influence upon Gray, Lord Henry speeds up the eroding of Gray’s soul. Lord Henry makes Dorian a selfish, shallow shell of a man. Worrying the future of his beauty and only making decisions that his beauty will benefit from, Dorian drives people away and becomes inconsiderate for others. After a long talk with Lord Henry, Dorian reflects on Henry’s words he

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