Innocence And Satanic Evil In The Pictures Of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde

A Balancing Act: Innocence & Satanic Evil In a society where beauty trumps a moral conscience there is an unnerving balance of understanding right from wrong. In The Pictures of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, the author writes of a story featuring a young man, Dorian, who finds himself selling his soul for eternal youth and beauty while getting painted by an upper-class artist, Basil. He sells his soul to a friend of Basil, Lord Henry. In the novel, Basil and Lord Henry emphasizes Dorian's inner conflict between innocence and satanic evil throughout the novel to portray that one must overcome the influences of our peers to find our true self.
Basil provokes Dorian’s innocence allowing him a chance to avoid corruption. In the novel, Basil paints Dorian a portrait because he admires Dorian’s beauty. Basil views Dorian as someone who is
This enables Basil to portray Dorian's beauty as an innocence feature because it represents that he is naive, almost childlike with such beauty. Dorian was a simple man and blind to the evilness within his society. In their society, beauty holds a high standard and Dorian was seem to most as a beautiful person, thus making Basil drawn to him. As well as, in the novel Basil encourages Dorian to pray for forgiveness for the mistakes he has made. Even though, Basil and Dorian haven’t spoke for a while he still believes that Dorian has a chance to change even if the portrait displays Dorian’s inner evils. (Wilde 175) By emphasizing a Christian viewpoint it ultimately shows that Basil only wanted good for Dorian. He suggests that prayer is the key for everyone's forgiveness including Dorian