What you have waiting below for you are reasons why I liked The Picture of Dorian Gray. They may or may not be the reasons you’d have for liking (or disliking) the book. But, if I’m successful in what follows, you’ll be able to use my feelings to decipher an idea of whether you’d enjoy spending time with the story.

See, I think that our worldview always influences our interpretation of things. With that idea and my first-paragraph disclaimer in mind, one of my favorite things about The Picture of Dorian Gray was its spiritual implications.

Don’t get me wrong, there are other things I enjoyed about the book. The book is good on many levels. First of all, it has a great story to it. Few books these days have classic simple ideas for stories. If I thought more about it, I might be able to think of a handful of modern day authors whose stories can be summed up in a few words and still sound interesting. No more than a handful, though.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is one such story. It’s the tale of a man who wishes that a painting of himself could grow old while he stays young. His wish comes to pass, the picture ages while he stays youthful. Since there are no external penalties for an immoral lifestyle, he participates in whatever whims feel good to him at the moment.

It’s a simple idea, but still very interesting. The simple but intriguing idea for a plot is what made me decide to read the book. Once I was inside of the story I soon realized how talented Oscar Wilde was as an author.

Wilde begins the book by introducing us to the three main players in his story. Obviously, we have Dorian Gray, the story centers around his life. We also have Basil Hallward. As the story begins, Basil is the one who is in the process of painting the picture of Dorian. Throughout the book, Basil is the good angel resting on Dorian’s shoulder.

The bad angel is Lord Henry Wotton. Dorian meets Lord Henry during the infamous painting session, and an immediate attraction begins between the two of them. Dorian is a young man who is very susceptible to Lord Henry’s distorted view of the world.

Lord Henry's bizarre outlook on life is always expressed in some sort of a quick proverb that sounds interesting, possibly profound, when you first hear it. For example, Henry says that: “…one of the great secrets of life" is "to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.”

But, after the initial witty punch wears off, you’re left with the shallow absurdity of what he’s said. The phrases always seem to be catchy and they always appeal to what Dorian wants to hear. (Read johngo’s article for an interesting equation of how a Lord-Henry-ism works.)

Lord Henry’s influence on Dorian is quite similar to the influence the Devil has on people. 1) He always seems to have something good to say, …good for the moment, at least. 2) He always seems to tell you what you want to hear. And, 3) it always leads to trouble.

Lord Henry’s advice at first doesn’t seem that harmful, just quirky. For example, near the beginning he says:

”…Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned…To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

As you can see, it’s nothing too obviously wrong. But, as Dorian starts to latch on to the teachings of his evil mentor the “proverbs” get worse. After a character in the story commits suicide, Lord Henry tells Dorian that it was a beautiful thing because it was poetic. He tells Dorian that, “women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts.”

Dorian doesn’t reject this, he accepts it, because he has enjoyed Lord Henry’s previous counsel so much. Dorian responds to Lord Henry’s advice by saying:

”’You have explained me to myself, Harry, ‘ he murmured, with something of a sigh of relief. ‘I felt all that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I could not express it to myself. How well you know me!’”

The development of the character of Dorian Gray is the second thing I enjoyed about the book. Through the course of the book we can watch him pile together ingredient after ingredient for disaster. He rejects good advice in favor of bad advice simply because that is what he wants to hear. He only does things that feel good to him. He covers up the guilt of his conscience with more frivolous wrong things.

The great thing about the book is that you’re never quite positive of how bad off Dorian is until the last third of the book. Wilde’s descriptions aren’t specific about what Dorian is doing to harm his life. As a matter of fact for part of the story I thought Dorian was worse off than what he was.

This is the way the story should be. One main theme of the book is that you can’t hide from your sins, they eventually catch up with you. Dorian has the perfect opportunity to hide his evil lifestyle since his body would never show the effects of what he had been up to. Because of this, those around him couldn’t tell how evil he actually was, they just heard rumors.

Oscar Wilde puts his readers in the exact same situation. We know he’s turning into a pretty bad guy, but we don’t really know how bad he is. We don’t find out until we near the end when others start finding out. Oscar Wilde has really created an interesting character and gone about doing so in a very fascinating way.

So, to recap, we have a great idea for a story. On top of that lies an interesting character. And, we’ve discussed some of the themes….you can’t hide your sin forever, steps toward a destructive life.

An interesting twist lies toward the end of the book (which I’ll do my best not to totally ruin for you). Through the death of one of the characters, Dorian is offered a chance to change his life around for the better.

I hate a cheap Christ-type in a book as much as anybody. And, I'm not going to say that this is what Oscar Wilde was trying to do when he chose to have this character die. All I’m going to say is that it reminded me of the Bible. In the Bible humans are depicted as pretty bad people, then Christ dies/lives and man has hope (salvation) if he’ll make the decision to trust Christ. That’s pretty similar to what is depicted in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a character dies which offers Dorian a chance for a new and improved life.

It’s easy to enjoy a book that is full of reminders of what you believe. The Picture of Dorian Gray is that way for me. There’s lots of imagery of the ease in which we can fall into sin. There’s a near-perfect analogy of how we try to hide from others the guilt and pain produced by our bad choices. It also shows our tendencies to try to drown our troubles in more of what started our troubles. And, finally, it offers us a reminder that it’s never too late to get things turned around.

So, there you have it. That’s why I like The Picture of Dorian Gray. Maybe my disclaimer from the beginning makes more sense now. With all that said, I’ll also add that I think any fan of literature will like the book. It’s not as much of a Sunday School lesson as I’ve made it sound. It’s well written and has stood up over the years. I think it would be well worth anyone’s time to read it.

Recommended: Yes