Lord Henry's Influence On Dorian Gray

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Without the presence and influence of Lord Henry, Dorian Gray would have remained pure and innocent throughout the entire novel. Dorian Gray is the neutral; Basil is the angel, and Lord Henry is the devil. Throughout the novel Lord Henry’s words and actions, corrupted Dorian Gray, which resulted in the death of an actress, the death of the angel, and the self-destruction of the neutral. This showed that if Lord Henry never encountered Dorian Gray, these events would not have transpired. In response, any outside force can cause those of pure heart to fall into corruption.

Lord Henry’s unique style with words have a certain charm to it that managed to manipulate people into doing things that they will never do themselves. He persuaded Basil …show more content…
Beauty, in a sense, comes in many forms, and Lord Henry wanted to see and claim that form of beauty no matter what he have to go through to get that beauty. This led to his obsession with Dorian. Dorian Gray’s youth and beauty eventually led to Lord Henry colliding with Dorian, clouding his mind and judgment to the point to “help” keep his youth and beauty. His obsessions also reflected upon Lord Henry’s personality as it showed what type of man he really is. With Lord Henry’s obsession of beauty, he clouded Dorian Gray’s mind, manipulated it in a way that made Dorian thinks the same way Lord Henry thinks. For example, when Dorian Gray’s Fiancé, Sibyl Vane died, Lord Henry responded in a sense that as an actress, her acting skills on stage was not as beautiful as it seems because, for him, it was not something he considered to be beautiful. It was when Sibyl died that Lord Henry recognized the beauty in her death. Lord Henry stated that, “They make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love (p.102);" in order words, he claim that Lady Sibyl’s life that was fill with all these events such as meeting Dorian, throwing her career and falling in love, and refusing her family, essentially the world from her perspectives, led to creation of her beauty at her death. Using these words, he convinced Dorian to not grieve for her death, but to instead be somewhat grateful for her death, as it made the world, mainly him, see another form of beauty at its finest. This relates to the selfish aspect of Lord Henry, considering the fact he will not allow Dorian Gray to grieve his ex-fiancé’s death, but Lord Henry wanted Dorian to be somewhat be nonchalant about the whole event because he realized that this helped him with his own obsession with beauty. Before he met Lord Henry, Dorian was a simple person who would not do any harm to anybody. After he met Lord
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