The Picture of Dorian Gray Moral Lesson

Oscar Wilde is one of the greatest literary showmen of the English nineteenth century. Of all his works, his only novel “…” is considered his masterpiece. In this novel, a moral lesson can be implied: Corruption will lead to destruction, obsession and torture. A moral lesson is experience that one can learn from a story and this lesson follows the standards of behavior considered acceptable and right by most people. A moral lesson implied when people suggest that something be true without actually saying it or suggests something as a necessary result.

In this novel, the moral lesson is not directly delivered to the readers. It could only be found when people analyze what happens to the main character- Dorian Gray, what cause leads to what effect. At first, Dorian Gray appears to be something ideal and beautiful: young, handsome, innocent, simple and sensitive. He becomes the embodiment of Lord Henry’s ideas of the aesthetic life. Dorian soon leaves Basil’s studio for Lord Henry’s parlor, where he adopts the tenets of “the new Hedonism” and resolves to live his life as pleasure- seeker with no regard for conventional morality.

He devotes himself to love in the beginning. Then he go from lover to lover, male and female and he pursues pleasure dispassionately. After that, he kills Basil, unable to accept the kind of love Basil is showing him. Dorian does not have a developed moral sense which would recognize a moral imperative- the idea that something is wrong no matter whether one ever has to pay to any consequences for them. He only regards acts as wrong when he can see their effects on the countenance of the figure in the portrait.

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He seems to separate the body and brain: “The body sins… regret”. If body’s sin is natural, the soul should be responsible for physical action. Where sin has been committed, everything will be over and selfish is irresponsible thinking. At the end of the novel, Dorian is punished by his conscience, his innate and inner judge. He is torture badly for a long period leading to a tragic death. It is not the only thing he has to pay for his sins. The corruption from others leads to his destruction, bsession and torture. In the end, Dorian seems to be punished by his ability to be influenced: if the new social order celebrates individualism, as Lord Henry claims, Dorian falters because he fails to establish and live by his own moral code. In our life, we need to be alert in front of the seductions that are popular nowadays: hedonism and immoral pleasures. If not, we may be affected badly by the materialism leading to regrettable consequences.

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