Question

Read the excerpt from The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and answer the question that follows.

As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself—something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They would defile it and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive.
He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament.

How does the use of figurative language develop or enhance the speaker's tone?

The metaphor illustrates the speaker's shame over his wrongdoing.
The metaphor shows how excited the speaker is about the painting.
The metaphor reflects the speaker's hope about Basil and Lord Henry.
The metaphor suggests the speaker is looking forward to sharing his art.

Answer 1

The use of figurative language in this excerpt conveys the speaker's shame and guilt over his wrongdoing.

Step-by-step explanation:

The use of figurative language in the excerpt from The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde develops and enhances the speaker's tone by illustrating his shame over his wrongdoing.

The metaphor comparing his sins to the worm that eats away at a corpse conveys the speaker's deep guilt and remorse.

It emphasizes the destructive nature of his sins and the lasting impact they will have on the painting.