Ch. 3

"Yes, he would try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful portrait. He would seek to dominate him- had already, indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death" (40).


Henry here is trying to make Dorian something like himself. Henry also believed that "there was something terribly enthralling in the excercise of influence... To project one's soul into some gracious form... to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back... to convey one's temperament to another... there was real joy in that" (39). Henry likes that Dorian is so easily molded because Dorian's views are yet to be matured. Henry wants to make an impression on him, something that he cannot do with Basil because Basil is not so impressionable, and often sees through his arguments. Also, more than just his impressionability, Dorian is a paradox, something Lord Henry is so fond of. Love and death are two very different things, but they become mixed together in Dorian's past, intriguing Henry to the point where he wants to be able to make Dorian into the type of person he views him as. This I do not view as homosexual, but more as Lord Henry's curiosity and meddlesome nature finding a playground in Dorian, who is too naive to notice he is being made as a plaything for Henry.

"'I can sympathize with everything, except suffering... I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life'" (43).

People always try to sympathize with pain. Pain is something people want other people to sympathize with, so that they do not feel alone in their suffering. However, here Henry says that no one should sympathize with pain, but instead with the beauty of life. While this is interesting, it seems so disconnected with the world. It would be easy to not sympathize with pain if there is no pain around you, but when there is, as there has always been, it is hard not to do so. Henry seems to be talking from a world apart from the one people live in. He seems to be living in a world without pain and full of beauty. This goes with his character, but it is a very extreme view.