Summary Of Dorian Gray's Dichotomy

In Chapter 1, Basil and Lord Henry manifest the dichotomy between Heaven and Hell, alluding to a future break of the harmony and duality of the novel’s moral conscience personified in Dorian Gray.
Basil idolizes Dorian as an entity of “simple nature,” creating a foundation of moral balance for the novel, representing Dorian as a Greek ideal (Wilde 14).
Lord Henry cements his archetype as the Devil as his influence is “bad,” (14) foreboding Henry controlling Dorian with the influences that “give him [Dorian’s] one’s own soul,” (17).

The end of Chapter 2 marks the dawn of Henry’s manipulative allure to youth, puncturing the balance between Basil and Henry’s roles, sowing the seeds of Hedonism in Dorian’s moral compass.
Wilde alludes to music as Henry hits a “secret chord” for Dorian (18) and sparks a Faustian sacrifice, selling his soul to

By having Basil be “gone” physically and covering the portrait, Dorian evades the truth of his reality blinded by material pleasures, believing he has been “saved from ruin,” even though Basil was trying to save him, plunging further into Lord Henry’s grasp (174)
When Dorian Gray visits the Opium Den in Chapter 16, his past overwhelms him and creates an existential crisis developing a sense of Basil’s message of purity haunting him and a potential turning point on Dorian’s road to the immortality of his aesthetic..
But by entering an Opium Den, Dorian symbolizes the depths and darkness of his inner thoughts, ‘to escape from himself” after seeing people of his past that remind him of his cruelty; similar to opium, his craving for the ideal aesthetic cannot be fulfilled any more, having withdrawal symptoms of who he, through the portrait, truly is