Chapter 2 is one of the most important chapters in the novel. First, it introduces the title character, Dorian. The reader is assured of his physical beauty, with his "finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair." Basil and Lord Henry are older, perhaps in their early thirties, but Dorian is past twenty and no child. Still, he has retained remarkable innocence and even "purity." He seems less mature than his years: He pouts; he is petulant; he acts spoiled. He blushes, becomes unreasonably upset, and cries.
Lord Henry, who enjoys manipulating people, spots Dorian's vulnerability immediately and goes to work. He soon has planted the seeds of terror in the young man, an unreasonable and immature fear of growing old and losing his youthful beauty. When Basil complains about Lord Henry's manipulating Dorian, Lord Henry responds that he is merely bringing out the true Dorian, and maybe he is.
Dorian is easily swayed by Lord Henry's seductive ideas, revealing that Dorian's true morals are vague, to say the least. At the beginning of the chapter, Dorian has no greater friend than Basil, but by the end of the chapter, he has abandoned Basil for Lord Henry after a very short afternoon. The reader might first attribute Dorian's weakness and fickle nature to youth, but the change in his nature occurs only after he has realized the importance of his own beauty, a very worldly attitude. In this short chapter, the reader not only meets the main character of the book; the reader also witnesses a complete transition in his nature from innocence to self-involved worldliness. Dorian's fall from grace takes place in just a few short pages.
