PODG: Ch. 19- 20

"Yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing that he has hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already" (227).

Dorian felt like this when he wrote his "first passionate love-letter [...] addressed to a dead girl" (103). Just like Dorian believed he "had been forgiven" (100) after writing the love letter, he believed the hideous thing would go away by doing a good deed. Dorian thought the picture would stop looking ugly if he was good. This was his only concern. Dorian was not actually sorry for what he did. He only wanted to cure his anxiety, so he would not look at the portrait in horror. Even if the portrait had the ability to look better, Dorian's intentions were neither selfless nor in search for forgiveness, so he would not have given the portrait any reason to improve. This only caused the portrait's mouth to curve in hypocrisy, which defined Dorian's real intentions. He was only going to be good, in order to change his portrait. Even if Dorian's one good deed had good intentions, it was not enough to make up for the many sins Dorian committed. At the thought of confessing, which he knew the portrait was asking of him, Dorian laughed at how ridiculous the thought was: "Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess? To give himself up, and be put to death?" (227- 228). Dorian felt "that the idea was monstrous" (228). In order to be considered a good person, he needed to confess. Otherwise, he really was being a hypocrite. Dorian knew the portrait would have given him support for his confession, but he chose to stab the portrait, which ended up killing himself. Either way, he was faced with death. If Dorian confessed, he would have been put to death. If he did not, he still would have died, but as a sinner.

"Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage" (229).

Dorian thought he would be able to get away with this situation, like he did in all the other tight situations he encountered. Unfortunately, his portrait tricked him. Dorian killed his conscience, which was always a part of him and he chose to suppress it behind a purple curtain. He could not hide from it any longer. By stabbing his conscience, he was stabbing himself. Dorian was the "face without a heart" (220). His portrait bore the suffering he should have felt. The moral of the book should be that one cannot get away from their sin. Like Dorian, Abigail from The Crucible walked away from her sins and ended up becoming a prostitute. Likewise, Dorian tried forgetting and turning away from his sins, but ended up dying as a sinner. Neither Abigail nor Dorian learned their lesson.