Tragic Hero

Let's try this again, hopefully without anymore technical difficulties.

So I didn't post on last week’s blog because quite frankly, I was completely confused and actually annoyed with this book. I found it very frustrating yet quite intriguing. Almost like watching a car crash that you can't look away from, I was annoyed by Dorian and Harry but still had to keep reading to see what happened. I think that most of my frustrations stemmed from the complete lack of responsibility that both of these characters showed for their own actions and the ridiculous rationalizations that they went through in order to explain away the guilt they felt. At least I think that was quite true for Dorian, but I'm still unsure of Lord Henry. I often found myself wondering if perhaps Lord Henry knew all along what was happening with Dorian and that he was simply pushing, molding and influencing him to see what would happen; sort of a sick psychological experiment to see how far you could push someone before they snapped or gave up. Who knows, that’s just a few of my thoughts on that topic.

Obviously while reading the book, I was picking up on the homosexual undertones but was often confused and not quite sure if I was reading more into the text than was really there. I was fairly certain that Basil’s adoration for Dorian was a representation of his homosexual attraction to Dorian. And I was fairly certain that Basil was trying to come to terms with his feelings about another man for the first time and continued to struggle with it throughout the book but ultimately seemed to be more accepting of who he was. As for Dorian, I thought perhaps he too had strong homosexual feelings but was ashamed of them. This is partly why he became so corruptive in other people’s lives. It seemed that his adoration for Sybil was his first attempt at trying to “love” a woman, however, when his friends saw her with him, he realized it was truly not her he loved but that he wanted desperately to be in love with a woman. I think this realization was one of the first steps he took towards understanding his life and trying to come to terms with who he was, unfortunately, he never seemed to actually accept himself for who he was. Instead he led a double life. Doing the “pretty” in high society as was expected of him, but also living out his frustrations and true identity in secret. To me, this was one of the most obvious points of hypocrisy in the book.

In reading the article by Alley, I found a whole new meaning or perspective on the book. As I stated previously, I had seen Basil as sort of the “good guy” in the book and Lord Henry as the “bad guy”. Almost like the little angel and devil sitting on opposite shoulders of Dorian. I think this is why Dorian was so torn in most of his life. He would give into his “temptations”, see the results, and then feel guilt for which he tried to rationalize away his part in the situations. What I didn’t see until reading Alley’s article is that Basil could be seen as the hero in the book who essentially triumphed despite his murder and lifestyle choice, that because he was more true to himself he was vindicated in the end. I saw this in Alley’s comment,

“Hallward was wayward in his confessions of love, bold in his portraitizing, and yet lacking in the ultimate execution of his love. In this sense, he represents the phrase, "to have a capacity for passion and not to realize it." His valorization and spiritualization are found, however, in his discovery of areas of himself he had not known before, and that very act makes him at one with Montaigne, Michelangelo, Winckelmann, and Shakespeare. The restored portrait serves as a commemorative of that initiation as well as a tragic reminder of his ultimate deficiency as a full agent of his own adventurous potential” (6-7).

To me this quote captures what I think Wilde was trying to express, that in the end despite the hypocrisy, corruption, and guilt that occur during one’s life, you can never escape your true identity.