Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Gray presents many themes, including conflict and influence. In this novel, Lord Henry Wotton creates a conflict with the naïve and innocent Dorian Gray by influencing and mentally corrupting him. Under this influence, Dorian becomes a hedonist, constantly pursuing pleasure and everlasting beauty. This one-way conflict, where Lord Henry almost completely controls Dorian's emotions, is the cause for Dorian's downfall and death.

Lord Henry, who enjoys manipulating people to calm his hedonist feelings, spots Dorian's vulnerability immediately and plants the seeds of terror in the young man by imposing him his radical, yet catchy theories of life. In the beginning of the book, when he meets Dorian, he tells him "[An influenced person's] virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor...