Dorian Gray Blog #4

"Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself-something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. The would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. They would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on."- page 122

This passage shows multiple uses of rhetorical strategies such as personification and imagery. Wilde refers to his sins as living things that are ruining Basil's portrait, saying they "mar its beauty, and eat away its grace." These sins have the ability to affect the portrait because Dorian's conscience is under so much strain. We are able to see this strain through the words Wilde uses, such as saying that Dorian's guilty conscience has the power to "defile it [the painting], and make it shameful". Lastly, Wilde uses comparisons such as worms to corpses compared to his sins to the painting. This paints a picture in the mind of the readers, while also succeeding in showing the seriousness of the passage. Because Wilde made Dorian a character that is unable to reveal his faults on his own, he found a different way to reveal them. In order for the readers to understand this, it was imperative that Wilde used these strategies as he did.