[Spoiler alert!]
After years of steeping himself in every kind of pleasure imaginable, thinking of no one but himself, he finally begins to realize that no amount of indulgence will fill the gaping hole he can feel inside himself. Dorian can see the way his sins blacken his soul bit by bit courtesy of a portrait painted of him as a young man. The more selfish and reckless he is with his life, the more hideous the portrait becomes. For a while, Dorian is nothing but pleased to see the portrait absorb the effects rather than having it show up in his physical appearance. But, as the novel draws to a close, he begins to frantically try to blot out his own transgressions. He needs desperately to believe that he can be "good enough" to cleanse his soul one decent and selfless act at a time. "A new life! That was what he wanted," Wilde says. "That was what he was waiting for. Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing, at any rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good."
I found it gut-wrenching to watch Dorian strain so hard to earn his salvation, only to discover how impossible it was. Gut-wrenching, because I recognize the same distress in myself when I try in vain to atone for my own sins rather than allow Jesus to do so for me, as He said He alone could do. "As he unbarred the door, a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and lingered for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already. He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. A cry of pain and indignation broke from him. He could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look a cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if possible, than before... Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that?... No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now."
Oscar Wilde lets the novel end in pain and disappointment rather than redemption. But I'm grateful for the reminder that men will never succeed in making themselves righteous before God, and even more so grateful to Jesus, "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world [John 1:29]" if we trust in Him for salvation.