The Last man Standing

In Oscar Wildes’ The Picture of Dorian Gray, all the characters face their tragic finals by either getting murdered or committing suicide. Starting with Sibyl’s suicide, Basil gets slaughtered by Dorian, Alan kills himself, and James Vane is shot by a hunter. The death of Basil, without doubt, was brought by Dorian, but when observed more carefully, I noticed that the death of others also had Dorian as the fundamental cause.   

 

Then, where or who was the centre of that evil, which corrupted Dorian to “murder” so many people? In the beginning of the plot, Dorian was said to be “unstained purity” but towards the end as somebody tells him “the goes the devil’s bargain” he turned out to be the monster he found in the portrait.

 

The first sacrifice of Dorian’s vice was Sibyl Vane, the former fiancé of Dorian who killed herself after Dorian unilaterally broke the marriage. James Vane, the brother of Sibyl Vane, was shot while stalking the “murderer” of his sister, Dorian, by a hunter who had mistaken him as a deer. Then, Dorian reveals his highest potential of wickedness when slaughtering his closest friend Basil and black mailing his chemist friend Alan Campbell to hide the crime scene. Alan, who later kills himself for guiltiness, tells Dorian “You are infamous, absolutely infamous!” after getting threatened that Dorian would publicize his homosexuality if he had not done the job.        

 

Murder after murder, Dorian seems to develop his evilness. Some people say, “as written in the book, the “yellow book” was the core of the bad influence.” But then as Wilde wrote “All art is quite useless,” could it really have been that single book that destroyed Dorian? And after every incident, Dorian still seems to have some moral senses, which are however; all contradicted by Lord Henry. From the very beginning of the story, Lord Henry has had a great amount of influence on Dorian and it can be seen from “Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and still the more poisonous influence came…” Also, as Lady Naborough said “Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked.” Many parts of the book proved his evilness.

 

Sibyl died from a broken heart and the failed relationship that devastated was actually due to Lord Henry who, behind the scenes, persuaded Dorian to break up with Sibyl because “One should never make one’s debut with a scandal.” Lord Henry, with his villainous character, not only encourages immorality, but also destroys the existing morality within Dorian by constantly justifying the immoral actions that Dorian himself regrets. After the death of Alan, Dorian falls in sorrow for luring the man into his death but Lord Henry describes it as “It’s the man’s own fault. Why did he get in front of the guns?”

 

The story ends by Dorian killing himself after acknowledging the tragic outcome of his wrong doings in the severely wrecked portrait. Finally, with Dorian committing suicide as a result of the immorality, which was introduced to him by Lord Henry, Lord Henry eventually becomes the “core” of all tragedies. And as of what I noticed to be very interesting, he was the only man alive, or the “last man standing.”