The Importance Of Being Earnest By Oscar Wilde

In The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde revealed that animalistic traits can tint a character’s intellectual attributes. All of the characters possess an overwhelming desire which seems to diminish their morality. Wilde uses Jack Worthing’s animalistic behaviors to reveal that his animal self is damaging his intellectual self. The play is presented to show that the characters retain an exaggerated pleasure with food, which shows their pleasures in inanimate objects. Every character in the play is drawn into lustful relationships, thus mutilating their psychological self. By embracing their animalistic traits the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest begin to blemish their intellectual character which inhibits their overall

In “The Importance of Being Earnest”, satirical techniques are used to reveal many aspects of social criticism made by Oscar Wilde. Class, education, gender, marriage, and religion are all topics that Wilde mentions. The largest criticism however, is on marriage, and how it is not taken seriously, and how people do not love each other in them.

One might believe that honesty is one of the building blocks of a society and is what initiates trust between people; furthermore, the Victorian era was a time period in British history where rules and morals appeared to be strict. The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, a nineteenth century author who was one of the most acclaimed playwrights of his day, is a play set in the Victorian time period that demonstrates how trivial telling the truth was. Different characters throughout Wilde’s play establish their dishonestly through hiding who they really are and pretending to be someone whom they are not. In an essay titled “From ‘Oscar Wilde’s Game of Being Earnest,’” Tirthankar Bose describes the characters from The Importance of Being Earnest as playing games with one another, which is a result of the deceit that was present in the play. Although the Victorian time period is a time characterized by strong morals and values, The Importance of Being Earnest proves this notion to not apply to telling the truth and ultimately questions why truth is not valued in the Victorian time period amongst other strictly upheld values. Honesty is not valued throughout the play because some of the characters felt to need to appear as if they represented the strict morals that were common throughout the time period.

Some people felt trapped by society and some needed a fuse to unwind. In Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, the character Jack Worthing is a upstanding member of his society. He is a responsible and respectable man and the guardian to a young girl named Cecily. He is considered to be a very dependable person. However, Jack would grow bored of his role and wanted to escape for a little fun, creating his irresponsible younger brother, Ernest. Who he use to escape to London to “bail” his brother out of trouble. Jack pretends to disapprove of his bother’s behavior to keep up his responsible and respectable look. Jack represents many of the Victorian values: He is a man of duty and honor, but becomes a hypocrite as he flouts those notions.

It has been said that ‘comedy, beginning in turmoil but ending in harmony, celebrates life.’ This relates well to ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ where Wilde proves that this comedy of manners does conform to this model since it traces the movement from distress to happiness. In this comedy of manners there is a movement from distress to happiness, even though some characters such as Algernon do not learn any lessons and stays ‘bad’.

A comedic work of literature is often just one that was meant as pure enjoyment for the reader. Other times, comedy is meant to shed light on a serious situation or instance the public refuses or is uncomfortable talking about in a non-comedic setting. However, the greatest type of comedy is one that makes the reader think, one that provokes “thoughtful laughter” from them. “The Importance of Being Earnest”, a satirical play written during Victorian Era Britain by Oscar Wilde, is such a piece literature. By poking fun at the time period in which his characters live in during one particular scene, as well as illustrating the unsubdued hilarity of a character during that scene, Wilde is able to elicit thoughtful laughter from his audience, ultimately showing them that life is far too serious and needs to be taken more lightly.

Webster's dictionary defines earnest as “characterized by or proceeding from an intense and serious state of mind". Which can be considered a pun since thought this play we see the characters being more apathetic. The Importance of Being Earnest is the story of Jack Worthing is the main character and the protagonist of this play. He is a well of business man who lives in the country and is very well respected there. But Jack has a secret he lives another in the city of London where he claims to go to take care of an irresponsible little brother named Earnest. There he meets a friend Algernon Moncrieff a person who also has created a person named Mr. Bunbury who he goes to the city to see because of him being on his deathbed. Through these

The Importance of Being Earnest is about a man named Jack Worthing who works several jobs in his town servicing other people. For many years, Jack has pretended to have a brother named Ernest who is supposedly off living a life on the edge on the pursuit of happiness, while managing to get into constant trouble. What Jack’s community doesn’t know, is that Ernest is just a made up person whom Jack uses as an excuse to leave work anytime he wants and to visit his lover Gwendolen. In the beginning, no one else knows that Ernest is actually Jack’s secret identity, until later in the play when Jack meets Algernon, who becomes

The fact that the people were born into what social class they had to live in leaves them from exploring themselves and potential. They are only allowed to aspire so high, and that defeats the purpose of find oneself because they are told what they are going to be. Shakespeare questions the rigidity of social class in the play, Alls Well That Ends Well, because he portrays Helen as being equal to Bertram because of deed and not birth. The King sees nothing wrong with Helen picking someone to marry that is high above her in social standing. He's even willing to grant her a title to make her equal to Bertram. The King says it is just Helen's status that Bertram disdains, but I'm not sure if it is.

According to Max Weber, social class is a person’s economic position in a society whereas status refers to one’s prestige, popularity and influence and oftentimes, is not determined by economic worth. For example, a priest may be regarded highly in society however may not be in the same economic bracket as a doctor or lawyer. The film, My Fair Lady tells a story about a man, Professor Henry Higgins and his efforts to transform a lower-class woman Eliza Doolittle into a well brought up “lady”, advising her to change previous behaviors and image. Henry Higgins, a distinguished language professor of high class challenges his good friend Colonel Pickering that he cannot fool society into thinking Eliza as a duchess.

It is a well known phenomenon that many authors' lives are reflected through a character in their work. In Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, the double life, or double identity, can be seen as the central metaphor in the play, epitomized in Algernon's creation of "Bunbury" or "Bunburying". As this term is the only fictitious word employed throughout the text, it is crucial to critically analyze not only its use and implications, but more importantly, the character who coins the term; Algernon Moncrieff. In addition, it is also significant to note the marked differences between Algernon and Jack's perceptions of the notion of bunburying, as it further develops Algernon's character within the text. But perhaps the single most

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, premiered in London in 1895 when Wilde was in the peak of his career. During this time of the Victorian Era, society was very moral and chaste, at least on the surface. There was a very specific code of behavior that governed almost everything, but focused mainly on the topic of marriage. This affected Wilde first-hand as he was married to a woman but also involved with men which was forbidden at the time. Using the themes of dualism and marriage, Wilde is trying to show the audience the ridiculous nature of Victorian society. Through the reoccurring theme of dualism, Oscar Wilde uses sizable amounts of satire to not only mock the trivial Victorian society, but more specifically to ridicule

A satire is a genre of literature that uses humour, irony, and/or exaggeration to criticize or show a character’s stupidity or vices. In this case, the literature is a play by Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedic, satirical play that shows ridicule and mockery of the characters through the use of repetitions and parallels to ultimately show the real meaning of being earnest. Wilde’s play is a satirical play because two important characters named Algernon and Jack are living double lives under the same identity. The two characters live double lives in order to escape from reality and live life with no responsibilities. Although, in the end the two characters are caught and live more fulfilling lives under their christian names. This act of living a double life is a repetition presented throughout the play. Another action that is in the play which is linked to parallels, is Gwendolen and Cecily. Gwendolen and Cecily are parallels in that they say similar lines throughout the play and they both will only fall in love with a man named Ernest. The last idea that is linked with repetition is the marriage between Algernon and Cecily and the marriage between Jack and Gwendolen. Wilde’s play is a satisfactory example of a satire because of the irony, repetitions, and foils of each character.

Vanity and undeniable ego are characteristics of self-destructive properties. In the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde shows how these can lead to a man’s downfall. He displays this through the character of Dorian Gray. The novel explains how as Dorian grows up and through his life, he is ultimately destroyed by his own ego, vanity and inability to change or realize how what he does affects not only him but the lives of those around him. Dorian Gray struggles throughout the novel with the daunting facts that he is Vane, has an enormous ego and cannot realize the full extent of his own actions

For instance, Jane and Bingley are both of different social ranks but it was not an obstacle they had to overcome. However, Darcy and Bingley’s sister thought otherwise and decided to end things between them before it got serious (make it sound like Bingley is a child; talk about how Darcy talked him into leaving Jane). Jane was genuinely in love with Bingley, however, her financial status made her seem like she was aiming for the money and financial security. Darcy and Ms. Bingley decided to take a stand and ‘save’ him from heartbreak (change this I don’t like it), so, they moved to the city and left Jane clueless on what she has done to push him away. Darcy, being one of the people who decided to split Jane and Bingley, has his own problems with class orders and interactions, believing that everybody that is financially inferior to him is less educated and is not worth his time. Darcy has proven that he is vain and pretentious at the ball, where he saw Elizabeth for the first time. However, his first impression of her and her family made his theory somehow right. Due to the Bennets behavior at the Netherfield ball, his impression of Elizabeth was based off of her family’s vulgarity, and assumed that she was foolish, uneducated, and uncivilized. ADD QUOTE *** (Page 12, first