Tom Riddle Is Dorian Gray’s Literary Twin
The Harry Potter series boasts a lot of baddies, but the worst member of the wizarding world is definitely Lord Voldemort (sorry, sorry, we mean He Who Shall Not Be Named). The Dark Lord is so powerful that he’s managed to inoculate himself from mortality altogether by way of his array of precious Horcruxes. Some of these things are so yawnworthy *CoughGauntsRingCough* that we don’t even get to read about their destruction, but others get way more page play, like the anagrammatic Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Tom, a manifestation of Voldy in his peak days at Hogwarts that lives in a magic diary, is handsome, charming, highly talented, and totally evil. And we think we know just where J.K. Rowling got her inspiration for him: the equally dubious classic character in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Here’s our case for comparison:
- They’re both made eternal thanks to transplanting parts of their humanity into inanimate objects
Like Tom Riddle, Dorian first becomes this ageless being thanks to a whispered wish-spell that connects him to a thing—in his case, an artist’s rendering of himself that will tarnish in his stead—and so long as that device is left intact, his “life” span is infinite.
For Tom, it’s the same story—as long as the magic diary he’s been attached to continues to slip under the Hogwarts radar, he’s a forever fella.
- They’re also both devilishly handsome charmers who know how manipulate people
Dorian and Tom are both painted as similar portraits of intrigue, whose external beauty and savvy earn them many fans (and foes). On the inside, though, they’re both rotten hedonists who care only about their own eternities and destroy lives in the process.
So, naturally, both of them have used people to get their ways of making this arrangement happen, too. With Tom, it was a matter of coaxing out the details of the whys and hows of horcrux magic from his adoring instructor, Professor Slughorn. Likewise, Dorian’s radiance has affected Basil the portrait artist so thoroughly that his masterpiece magically becomes an accidental conduit for his muse’s everlasting youth.
- They can solemnly swear they’re up to no good, that’s for sure
Throughout the decades of their timelessness, these characters use their longevity of youth and existence for equal ill-doings.
In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle-in-diary-form manages to lure in and possess little Ginny Weasley. That’s when he carries out his anti-muggleborn plan of unlocking the Chamber and unleashing a whole mess of Basilisk attacks on those wizards without pure blood by way of the ancient beast’s petrification power.
And Dorian’s not much better. He basically spends a full two decades indulging in every vice known to man—breaking innocent hearts, abusing mind-altering substances, and, yes, even cold-blooded murder—while the picture bears all the wear of his bad behavior.
- When they do finally go down, it’s because they’ve both totally done it to themselves
Skilled though they are with all their tricksy business, each of these guys are eventually found out and suffer similar fates.
In Dorian’s case, the artist whose infatuation with him has started this whole nefarious adventure comes face-to-face with what he’s done—by then, the portrait shows someone unrecognizably hideous and old—so Dorian decides to takes him down. But Basil’s reaction to the pic gets under his skin. Eventually, when others start to catch on as well and try to harm him (and discover his body is impervious to destruction), Dorian realizes that the only thing really holding him back from complete invincibility is the painting, which acts as a physical tell and a constant source of conscience. So, he tries to rid himself of it with a quick canvas stab, but that violence winds up reflecting back on him and destroys him.
Similarly, the source of Tom Riddle’s sorcery is discovered by Harry & Co., just as he’s taken on a physical form after possessing Ginny’s soul, and while attacks on Tommy’s pseudo-body aren’t gonna hack it, a shot of Basilisk venom to the book’ll do the trick.
Even Voldemort, whose eternity equation Tom Riddle was just a fraction of, suffers a Dorian-esque demise. He gets hit by his own rebounding curse while trying to destroy the final reminder of his fallibility—Harry Potter himself, the Boy Who Lived through Voldemort’s Attack at Godric’s Hollow.
Have you noticed any other striking similarities between these two characters?
