Extended Essays 2021

interrelated, i.e. bread is equivalent to body, wine is equivalent to blood. However, the

physical incarnations utilised to reflect the facets of Dorian Gray’s existence, the portrait and

Gray himself, are not compatible, meaning they cannot form a whole representation of his

being. The portrait, as a symbolic representation of Gray’s soul, had become increasingly

warped, so it was no longer congruent with his bodily form. This is shown when Basil

Hallward sees the distortion in the once beautiful painting he had made of Dorian Gray. The

third person omniscient narrator says from the perspective of Hallward that ‘…it was fro m

within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away’ 32 . Wilde ’s utilisation of

the metaphor, ‘the leprosies of sin’, has compared the destruction o f Gray’s soul to a

grotesque illness, therefore creating revolting imagery to highlight the immoral or ‘evil’

nature of Gray’s actions. Additionally, this represents the discordance between Dorian Gray’s

desecrated soul, and his unaltered youthful body. Therefore, both Gray (i.e. body) and the

portrait (i.e. soul) are considered to be ‘ugly’ as they have become dissonant products of a

once harmonious being.

The Faustian Bargain

Finally, the Faustian Bargain, also known as a deal with the Devil, is a medieval pact

common in European folklore where one trades something of extreme spiritual importance for a worldly or material benefit 33 . The term derives from the Legend of Faust, a character

present in German folklore and literature, who surrendered his soul to an evil spirit,

Mephistopheles, who is representative of Satan. In return, Faust received otherwise unattainable knowledge and magical powers that gave him access to the world’s pleasures 34 . These bargains are always tragic for those who make them, because what is relinquished is ultimately more valuable than what is gained 35 .

32 P.150, Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray 33 Ramm, B., 2017. What the myth of Faust can teach us. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170907-what-the-myth-of-faust-can-teach-us [Accessed 6 May 2021]. 34 Britannica, 2020. Faustian Bargain. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Faustian-bargain [Accessed 6 May 2021]. 35 Britannica, 2020. Faustian Bargain. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Faustian-bargain [Accessed 6 May 2021].

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