Morality is a funny thing. Whether that be seen through the eyes of a bystander, or through the protagonist themselves, there’s no doubt that everyone has a moral compass. However, when we’re led astray, we try to blame our fall on someone else, despite the fact that we know we’re responsible for our own horrific end. Such was the case of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

This classic novel is breathtakingly tragic in its portrayal of human decadence. The story begins by introducing Dorian Gray, a handsome young man who meets the hedonistic Lord Henry Wotton. While Basil, an artist, is painting Dorian’s portrait, Lord Henry manages to convince Dorian to accompany him in indulging in sinful pleasures. Soon after, Dorian meets an actress named Sibyl, who falls madly in love with him. However, when this infatuation causes her to mess up her lines in the play, Romeo and Juliet, she tries to find solace in Dorian’s presence, only for him to coldly reject her. When he tries to apologize, he finds that she has already taken her own life. He goes home, and finds that the portrait that Basil has painted for him has grown more hideous. When Dorian tries to indulge himself in any pleasure to help him forget the pain he caused, the portrait only grows to be more hideous over time. Basil finds out about this, and tries to convince Dorian to change his ways. However, Dorian calmly murders Basil, then frames a friend of his for the crime. When he tries to become righteous, the portrait only gets uglier. He finally takes his own life one night. When his servants find his corpse, they only see the shell of a horrific man that used to be Dorian Gray.

The Portrait of Dorian Gray has served as a muse for other writers. It’s like the situation involving the devil and the angel. While Basil tries to get Dorian on the right track, Dorian continues to indulge in his vices. Even when he realizes what’s been happening to him, he takes no responsibility for his mistakes, and instead tries to pin the blame on Lord Henry, who states that his mistakes were his own. It’s a human instinct that has overtaken us time and time again. The portrait has also served as a window to Dorian’s soul. For every sin he commits, the portrait grows uglier and uglier. Despite his best attempts to make it right, he simply cannot, because he’s too lost in his own sins to know where to turn. There are allusions made to Faust with the deal with the devil, as well as Sibyl’s death being comparable to Ophelia’s in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Even today, the work has no shortage in fans. For example, in the horror TV show, Penny Dreadful, Dorian Gray is portrayed as an immoral man who takes no pleasure in anything around him. Despite this, like his literary counterpart, there is no reward for him when he indulges in this behavior, none at all, despite the fact that he’s willing to give anything just to feel again. In The Happy Hypocrite by Max Beerbohm, the short story collection describes the more humorous implications of moral degradation. It’s this sort of work that has inspired many of us today to portray human morality as a fragile thing, that anything can lead us astray. It’s a harsh reflection that has often cultivated the many tragedies that we now enjoy today.