The long third-to-last paragraph of "The Picture of Mr. WH" sharply interrupts the dialogue that has just revealed the true nature of Erskine's death , a friend of the narrator. The narrator is welcoming the shocking news that Erskine had died naturally of consumption and not of suicide, as a letter from Erskine himself had previously led the narrator to believe. Then, in considering the strange circumstances surrounding his friend's recent passing, the narrator wonders why Erskine in his tragic exit "turned back to tell him what was not true" (100). The paragraph continues with the narrator reflecting on the meaning of his friend's dying lie, ultimately attempting to convince himself of its “true uselessness” (100) in converting him back to the Willie Hughes theory. However, latent in the language he uses to reject and devalue Erskine's letter is precisely that capacity for reconversion that the narrator explicitly denies. He is almost desperately convincing himself that he has lost faith in the theory. He wants to believe that he has experienced, at the same moment that his faith has abandoned him, a fundamental change in his character and sensibility that prevents him from being struck by Erskine's pose of martyrdom. He assures himself that Erskine's act was futile and that he is firm in his disbelief, but in assuring himself, his very deliberate language full of ambiguity, deception and misrepresentation seems to suggest that Erskine's pose is slowly instilling in the narrator a belief nervously renewed. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThe narrator, walking away from the doctor who has just informed him of the suicidal nature of Erskine's death, immediately asks himself a litany of questions, reflecting the reason for his friend's lie. Characteristic of Wildean narration, it paraphrases and misappropriates a literary source. He alludes to a passage of the indirect speech in Les Misérables, generalizing it and attributing it to Hugo himself. By first asking the question “Was Hugo right?” the narrator asserts a rhetorical mode and, given Hugo's respected and well-known place in literary history, there is a preemptive level of external authority lent to the next question: "is affectation the only thing that accompanies a man up the steps of the gallows?" "(100)? By posing Hugo's quote as a question, the narrator wants to be taken at his word that it is an accurate and unbiased representation of Hugo's thoughts. He distracts from the problem of the veracity of the attributed paraphrase and redirects attention to the truthfulness of the question formulated. However, upon closer examination, it appears to be a paraphrase of convenient misremembering or, more likely, a calculated misrepresentation. The narrator of Les Mis , who is probably very close to Hugo, actually calls the act “sublime” and misunderstood (326). They are just some of the “people in town who said it was all affectation” (326). passage, eliminates the sublimity, attributes the citizens' misunderstanding to Hugo himself, and finally presents a misleading paraphrase to characterize Erskine's action. As a result, he reveals his actively deprecative and misleading tendencies that set the tone for his subsequent reflections . However, he does so in the form of questions that demonstrate his palpable doubts and indecisiveness regarding the thoughts running through his mind. He combines that uncertainty with the subliminal connotations of Hugo's true and contradictory passage which is ineluctably intertwined withthe paraphrase. Thus, while apparently questioning the unnecessary affectation of Erskine's dying act, he is implicitly suggesting the incompatibly sublime aspect of the act that was performed.Hugo's true statement. Wilde's narrator continues the same line of thought with another question: “Did Erskine simply want to produce a dramatic effect” (100)? No, the narrator admits, confident in his ability to pigeonhole his friend, “it wasn't like him” (100). In fact, according to the narrator, attempting to produce such an effect was more “like something I could do” (100). What is initially striking about this sentence is the vagueness inherent in constructing a sentence around a simile with the decidedly vague descriptor “something.” However, it is also noteworthy that the narrator chooses to make this confession in the past tense potential paired with “could.” The use of this tense demonstrates the careful and deliberate break he is making with himself, the narrator from the beginning of the story, as he could have easily constructed the sentence using the present tense. The use of the verb “might” draws even more attention to his sentence and, in the process, makes his statement seem somewhat suspiciously elaborate. The “power” creates an even greater distance by insinuating that even if it were as it was before, there is still just the possibility of it producing anything close to such a dramatic effect. He could have used the conditional "would" instead of "could" and created less of a rift between himself, both past and present, and the hypothetical production of such a dramatic effect. The narrator "had become wiser", however, than he was at the beginning of the text and that is why it is only his past, naive self that could do something similar to what Erskine did. Considering his effusive praise and passionate emulation of Cyril Graham throughout most of the text, before claiming to have lost faith in Willie Hughes' theory, he is required to admit the possibility that his former self was eager to create a this effect. However, it is perhaps the fear that Erskine's dramatic pose in self-realized departure is influencing his disbelief in the theory that leads the narrator to self-consciously distance himself. However, the narrator states that he does not think that mere dramatic effect was the purpose of his friend's letter. He claims that Erskine “was simply driven by a desire to reconvert him to the theory of Cyril Graham” (100). In essence, the narrator offers two possible reasons for the friend's letter: to create a dramatic effect or to convert it back to theory. He dismisses the former in favor of the latter. But, strangely enough, he uses synonymous adverbs in both cases. “Simply” and “simply” both provide a clear, reduced, almost tiny description of the two possible reasons. This is another conscious move to downplay the significance and influence of Erskine's letter. However, doesn't juxtaposing the two potential motives as separately simple and negligible, or as false or ineffective, leave room for the effectiveness of their fusion? This conflation does not enter into the narrator's thought process and understandably so, as it would, without a doubt, force him to admit the effect that Erskine's letter was having on him, despite his protests. For isn't the production of dramatic effect, in this case, inextricable from Erskine's actualization of the desire to reconvert the narrator? Especially considering the narrator's aesthetic sensibility and his friend's intimate understanding of his predilections and personality? As the pace continues to grow in the narrator's thoughts, he becomes more blatant in his use of misrepresentation as.?