Character Analysis Of Dorian Gray - 1398 Words

Dorian gray is the ultimate round character of this novel. The change he undergoes and the character development from an innocent boy full of hope, dreams and romance to a man who was full of vanity, pride and was so engulfed in his own sins that it led to him murdering one of his best friends. Throughout the whole novel, we see a handful of characters that play significant roles like Lord Henry, Basil Hallward and Sybil Vane who had their own form of tryst with Dorian. But all of them remained as stock characters who never had any significant change in personality or character. They remained more or less the same and acted as catalysts to Dorian’s ultimate demise. His condemnable downfall can be traced with the following extract- â€Å"To cure†¦show more content†¦The constant thought of the portrait haunted him and he would be eager to check it constantly. But all hope wasn’t lost for him yet. He had a little bit of morality left in him to realize that that he had broken the rules. He has given up on any hope for redemption. He doesn’t think that there are ways to balance the scale of right and wrong. Of the three important characters in the story, we see that each played a part in defining aesthetic appeal and the standards of beauty. On one side, we have Basil Hallward, the creative artist with a heart of gold. He was a true friend to both Lord Henry and Dorian. He worshipped Dorian’s beauty and wanted to capture it in his art. He held high his morality, ethics and code of conduct. He never was a forward person. He believed in the philosophy that art is for art’s sake. There should be no deeper meaning and that the artist’s vulnerability should never be shown in his art. This was the true essence of the Aesthetic Movement. He had faith in people and believed them to be innately good. On the other side is Lord Henry with his conniving manipulations and hedonistic ideologies. His philosophy was to uphold intellect over morality and ethics. He was a man who worked on the boundary between good and bad, right and wrong. He never crossed the line himself. Only he led Dorian to cross the line. He was dipped in cynicismShow MoreRelatedThe Picture Of Dorian Gray Character Analysis830 Words   |  4 Pagesappearances have much to do with the perception of characters in literature. The way a character looks can have a great effect on both the way other characters interact with them and the way the characters themselves interact with both their own thoughts and the world around them. In the works chosen, the appearances of the characters to be analyzed fall on opposite ends of the spectrum of aestheticism. 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