Portrait of Dorian Revisited

The portrait could never change, but it did and took on the ill-fated look of a man filled with demons. How could anyone look so horrible on the inside? Ask Dorian who would stoop to slyly wield an influence on unsuspecting youth and cause the suffering he did among those that admire him, at one time.

He was the subject of a portrait with strange power that the artist felt when he painted it. He was drawn to paint eternal beauty but there would be a curse on this as was instigated by a common friend whose value system was projected onto Dorian, it seems; a value system that made Dorian grow demonic with each encounter he made and leave people kill themselves or get killed. He would want to rid himself of that curse bu each time he wanted to do good as through marriage there was his sadistic mentor who would have think of pleasure first.

So pleasure then governed his days as he took his cues from his mentor and according to the curse which was supposed to have been laid upon him by the cat stone idol, he developed episodes of falling into the spell of being another man content to do debauchery with no respect for the other individual. Such as the case when he fell in love or rather lusted after a young singer. She visited his home and fell in love with his Chopin music, sad she called it but she was sad to see that the only way to keep Dorian was to put her principles aside and stay over the night rather than leave for home.

She was attracted to the man who later destroyed her stating that after the affair he could no longer see her, She took her life and word did get back to Dorian whose facial expressions would stay stern no matter who had fallen because of the power of his pen or because he decided to become moral for a day once his period of reveling at the east London pub was over. Her brother would follow her fate as he would try to trace who the murderer was only to be to killed at a fateful hunting event. Originally he had mistaken Dorian for someone else when he saw him at Dorian's favorite haunt only Dorian had to have been older than he appeared.

It was Dorian's painting that would show his aging all the time while the man would gallivant and break hearts and minds along the way. Dorian would store this painting away so that the artist would not ask to see it although eventually he was shown it as Dorian allowed a glimpse of his horrible world to the man who created his image in oils. That man had to be destroyed because he had witnessed the terrible transformation of the painting and to Dorian suddenly stricken with desperation, this could not be tolerated.

Then he decided to marry his niece and get away from the habit of cruising the pubs at night but he soon felt remorse for having chosen her and wrote her a letter of refusal just as he had done to his previous love he met at the east end pub. To witness that 'good' moment he drove back to his London mansion to see if the change would register back on the painting and the grimaces of horror would soften. There was something positive, he thought but in order for the painting not to 'cause any more harm', as he put it, he decided to stab it and stab it he did by cutting through at the level of his heart. He had externalized his ills and the painting could only have reminded him of his past guilt. He died upon stabbing it as its ugliness was transferred to him. The portrait returned to its original state with a dagger through it and his second lady was free from potential harm.