Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Picture of Dorian Gray #5

           After Dorian Gray first notices the change in the portrait and once he makes the connection that the shift represents the degradation of his soul, he becomes increasingly paranoid about it. He frets when Basil comes to visit him, and even worries that his servants and the framer will see the revealing masterpiece. He refuses to allow others to look upon it, and decides to hide it away into his abandoned play-room. When he enters the room, he "recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away" (89). Dorian's placement is ironic. Dorian chooses a place where he spent most of his innocent childhood, before having met Lord Henry. After the encounter and the transfer of influence, Dorian begins to lose his once naive purity, and instead his soul begins to decay. He tries to conceal the decay by hiding its only proof in a room that is yet untouched by the new Dorian Gray. The sheltered play-room is the only place "secure from prying eyes" (89), and before the painting is placed there, it was also the most restored part of Dorian's life. He would have remained untouched by sin if he had only chosen to listen to Basil's warnings about Lord Henry's influences.

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