"Culture and corruption ... I have known something of both"

Melissa P. Brown

2/11/15

            At the beginning of these chapters readers start to realize more and more how corrupt the story and main characters are. Exemplified most in Dorian’s desire to forget his guilt over killing his friend even though in one section he unconsciously draw a picture in the likeness of basil. Ultimately Dorian does anything to forget or erase any evidence of his crimes. Doing this only compounds his crimes further by forcing his old friend Alan Campbell to destroy the body of Basil, only to commit suicide out of guilt. And his old crime of being the fault of Sybil’s suicide lead her brother to be driven mad and dead himself. He also states that his fears of death over his crimes is plaguing him more then emotional or immoral guilt. Any recognition of his different crimes through out the book in these last chapters is other blamed on an outside source. This become the point in representing vanity and such levels depicting corruption became one of the many reasons why this book, at the time it was written, was so poorly frowned upon. The novel used the idea of dandyism, something that was followed by many people at the time (including Oscar Wilde), and used it to, by this point in the book, thumb it’s nose into what morals and beliefs society was expected to have. The book points out, in a subtle manner that society does not always do as expected. The idea of this being one of the many messages of the book scares readers into thinking this could corrupt a society. It could be because of chapters such as these that caused certain levels of censorship. 

Questions:

1. Do you agree with my theory, if not why?

2. Can you think of any other examples though out these chapters that match my theory and how?

3. Can you say with any kind of honesty that Dorian had any true guilt over what he did? (give an example)