The Differences Between a Swine and a Scumbag

The Picture of Dorian Grey and Hamlet are alike in many ways. Some characters from Hamlet seem to be copied in the story of Dorian Grey. Sybil  Vane is very similar to Ophelia. Both are girls who are loved but have that love Taken away from them. Because of this they commit suicide. Hamlet did love Ophelia and when he said he didn’t, "You should not have believed me…I loved you not." it was to protect her. In the end he shouts to her brother of  how much he did love her over her grave. The deaths of Ophelia and her father ripped at Hamlet's soul and made him feel guilty. In sibyl’s case, Dorian loved her acting then threw her away and was too shallow to even feel sorry about it. Instead he blotted it from his memory.

                Laertes character compares to James Vane. Both have their sisters taken away from them by some man and both die. Hamlet feels guilty about Laertes death and forgives him before he dies. When James Vane dies, Dorian Grey is much relieved.

 The Ghost plays a similar role Lord Henry. Both Hamlet and Dorian Grey were so open to being controlled by ideas of revenge or vanity that one character ,like the Ghost and Lord Henry,  is able to sway them easily .Hamlet is put in  such a huge position of responsibility to revenge his father that he choses to kill to make it right.  Dorian Grey is so willing to listen and take ideas to heart that Henry had to only  say one thing to drive him away from the light. Both Hamlet and Dorian love the King and Lord Henry and it is easy for these elders to control the young men.

Dorian and Hamlet both want to live in a different reality. Dorian Grey uses his painting to escape old age and troubles of the flesh but, in the end, it kills him. Hamlet is angry at the world and sees everyone as betraying him, even his own mother. He thinks of suicide more than once. “To be or not be, that is the question...”  Hamlet instead pretends to be mad to escape the responsibility of the things he does and he starts to like it.  Then, he falls into his own pit of madness and lives in a different reality. In the end, his madness drives him to kill and be killed.

                Hamlet is a confused, scared, angry, guilty, and responsible tragic hero. Some saw his fatal flaw as his inability to act, but the real “flaw” is his moral standards. He tries to play by the rules by not killing Claudius while he was praying. By trying to play by the rules in a world full of deceit, more people are killed. By the postponing of the kings death, Hamlet is being a gentleman and he sees moral standards as more important than anything. Dorian is also guilty and confused but most of his life he had flushed his emotions down the drain, into his blacked soul. Dorian is not a tragic hero because of his inability to repent. In the end, some say that he repents when he stabs the picture, but he really stabs it because he can’t bear to look at himself. Dorian is Hamlet, but a Hamlet with no sympathy, forgiveness or love.