The Picture of Tom Riddle || By Axel

Started:: 5/1/25

Posted:: 5/1/25

Writing by Axel

Edits, headers and cover image by Amaya🫶

Proofs in comments!

The Picture of Tom Riddle || By Axel-Started:: 5/1/25
Posted:: 5/1/25
Writing by Axel
Edits, headers and cover image by [Ama

Hey there HPA! It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog on here. In fact, all of my most recent ones were from the Triwizard Tournament back in February. Well, I thought I’d make my return by doing my school English final! Haha, kind of. If you love books and classic British literature, you’ll likely know The Picture of Dorian Gray. This post, will be a little comparison of the parallels I found between Dorian Gray and Tom Riddle. I hope you enjoy!

Quick forewarning… if you plan to ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray there will be some spoilers. And I suppose if you are new to Harry Potter as well… but that seems rare.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a classic piece of literature and follows a man, named of course… Dorian Gray. The book follows his life through a portrait painted by Basil Hallward, a painter and a good friend of Dorian. Basil believes that Dorian is a symbol of youth and idolizes Dorian, it’s actually more of an obsession. He becomes very obsessed with Dorian and constantly warns him about becoming friends with Lord Henry Wooten. Well, over time Dorian shifts and does some bad things and this causes the once youthful portrait to physically change into a cruel smirk which Dorian begins to resent. He later begins to spiral into insanity over the way the painting has changed, as it no longer shows youth and innocence as it once did. While there are many things that lead up to this, they aren’t all that important. Basically, he murders a man and causes 2 others to die. In the end, he stabs the painting, thinking that it would then return back to the way it was. However, it ends up killing Dorian in the end.

Now! For the main piece of the blog that i’ve been looking forward to. And also figured I’d provide a little insight to what actually inspired me to make this. In my English class (Gods, Ghosts and Monsters) we have been analyzing classic literature and my final essay is a synthesis essay (comparing two pieces of literature or media to each other and finding similarities) so that’s basically what I wanted to do here! But enough of that, let’s get into it!

• Both Tom Riddle and Dorian Gray have a common theme. They want to remain youthful and use different objects to preserve the looks they once had. For Tom Riddle, it was slightly different because there was the element of the Horcruxes. For Dorian Gray, it was the painting. Both the Horcruxes and the painting ended up destroying them in the end. Ironically, their obsession with remaining young and powerful is what killed them both. Tom Riddle’s Horcruxes being destroyed are what made him lose not only power, but also youth. In the Chamber of Secrets for example, we see a younger much hotter Tom Riddle than in Goblet of Fire. For Dorian, the painting got uglier and uglier as he did more bad things, that ultimately lead to Dorian’s idea to stab the painting. He believed it would go back to normal, yet instead it killed him. If they hadn’t cared so much they ideally would have lived way longer without those objects limiting them.

• Another parallel between the two is their view on love. While Tom Riddle’s isn’t as blatantly obvious, we know that he only ever had interest in Bellatrix Lestrange. For Dorian Gray, he loved Sybil Vane but was also the reason that his views on love changed. He loved her because she was an actress and when that fell apart he lost interest in her. How do these relate? Well, after he lost Sybil Vane he didn’t ever believe in love. When it was brought up he always had a mundane response ready to go. Many believed that this was due to Lord Henry’s influence, but still.

• The final parallel I want to mention, is that both Tom Riddle and Dorian Gray ended up being influenced and failed by others which led to their villain arc. Tom Riddle had a rough childhood as we all know, and no one could really help him once he was too far gone. The similar thing happened to Dorian Gray. In the beginning, he mainly was friends with Basil Hallward, until that went south. He became closer with Lord Henry which didn’t work out well for him, because Lord Henry often expressed his careless opinions about life. If Dorian had stayed under Basil’s influence it could have gone way better for him.