Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
Basil was, for me, the one character in the book truly deserving of sympathy. He seemed to be a genuinely good-hearted and ethical chap who did nothing worthy of his fate. That he fell in love with a pretty face and felt jealous of anyone with whom his object of desire spoke is something that could happen to anyone.
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I agree about Basil but also think he fell in love with the innocence of Dorian at the beginning of the tale.
Lord Henry was actually the worst of them for me even though, as Basil noted, "You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing." Maybe he didn't physically do the wrong things, but after seeing the hold he had on Dorian, his continuing to influence him in the ways he did certainly wasn't the moral choice. I was really hoping something bad would happen to him and somehow he would realize the damage he had done to Dorian. I wonder what he would have done if Dorian had shown the strains his lifestyle should have produced. (I picture the "faces of meth" campaigns where they show a before and after picture of someone who abuses meth over a short period of time.)