The Secret Life Of Saeed : The Pessoptimist And Oscar Wilde

The deception of appearance is also echoed in “The Importance of Being Earnest” with Wilde immediately addressing the point that “appearance blinds” through the main protagonists of Jack and Algernon with both of these characters assuming the name of “Ernest” in order to deceive Gwendolen and Cecily respectively. Wilde is explaining to the audience the shallow nature of the upper class by depicting how easy it is in constructing a deceptive appearance, with a simple name change allowing this. Fitzgerald also emphasises how a name can easily be used to deceive when he describes Gatsby as changing his name from “James Gatz” to “Jay Gatsby” in order to hide his middle class roots. “The fact that Jack, like Algernon, has been leading a double life…

Oscar Wilde’s play entitled “The Importance of Being Earnest” illustrates the concept of dual personality, fantasy, love, and lies. Jack, Algernon, Gwendolyn, and Cecily all live in lies. They are manipulated by their fantasies and desire for perfect relationship and love. Jack, the protagonist in the play, is the root of lies because of his imaginary brother named Earnest. Algernon uses the name to win Cecily, while Gwendolyn and Cecily are both fascinated by this name because it expresses strength and perfection of manhood. Due to their search and desire to have Earnest, the male and female characters escape from the reality. Therefore, Wilde in The Importance of Being Earnest portrays a gender doubled

insinuates the importance of being honest and truthful, while playing on the male name, Ernest. The pun in the title is a case in point. The earnest/Ernest joke strikes at the very heart of Victorian notions of respectability and duty. Gwendolen wants to marry a man called Ernest, and she doesn’t care whether the man actually possesses the qualities that comprise earnestness. She is, after all, quick to forgive Jack’s deception. In embodying a man who is initially neither

“We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideas…my ideal has always been to love someone of the name of Earnest,” as Gwendolen discusses with Jack about the name Earnest.Another point where Gwendolen and Cecily desire to marry a man whose name will be Earnest but it seems like a coincidence. “...it is a divine name. It has music of its own. It produces vibrations,” as Gwendolen explains how passionately she feels about someone with the name of Earnest. But it's not how Gwendolen feels or Cecily, it is about how the audience retrieves the information. With a double meaning like this, it could leave the audience in question whether he meant to use “Earnest” interchangeably. Wilde does not forget to give an understanding. Yes, Earnest is used as a name but it is no more important than to be earnest. It is to describe how he saw the Victorian society in reality. Citizens would use identities to escape from their problems. So why create it into a parody? Where people will enjoy witty Victorian

Whether it be sandwiches or muffins, food is important to the way we express ourselves, the same is true for the characters of a fictional work. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack leads a double life in Victorian Era London where he is known by the name of Ernest, and in the countryside where he is known as Jack. Throughout the play, Jack attempts to hide his secret life and his true name from his love Gwendolyn, who will only marry a man names Ernest. Soon enough, Jack’s lies spin out of control in a comedic spiral of trivial politeness. Interestingly, the few times that the characters are ever truly earnest, is when they are in the presence of food. Food gave characters a medium from which to express their true feelings to the audience

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 meaning of names is a central focus of the novel, because names define people. Their worth and functions are summarized by the names. To some extent, the names also discourage originality. This occurs especially to

What would a quixotic obsession on a name suggest about the character? In the play the Importance of being earnest, written by Oscar Wilde in the 1895, Gwendolen, the daughter of Augusta Bracknell, becomes fixated to the name Ernest. The play itself focuses on two men, Jack and Algernon, who have created false identities and eventually get stuck up in their own lies when the truth is revealed. Gwendolen represents her mother in some approach, as both are strong-minded and sophisticated, thus she evolves a quixotic obsession over the name Earnest

One thing that Jack and Algernon have in common is that they both have these false faces. Algernon’s alter ego Bunbury is a version of himself used in the country but he uses Ernest to marry Cecily. The story deals with Ernest, this immorally imaginary man that both Cecily and Gwendolyn become engaged to, it exemplifies the irony within the name. Most of the irony comes from this character. One of Wilde's satiric targets is romantic and sentimental love, which he ridicules by having the women fall in love with a man because of his name rather than more personal attributes. Gwendolyn said “No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces

The Physical Journey In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde effectively portrays the significance of a physical journey during the Victorian era by utilizing juxtaposed personalities, satirical moments, and an appropriate setting for the Victorian era. Protagonist Jack Worthing must live two different lives in order to receive what he desires: marriage, love, and acceptance into proper society. The physical journey from the city to the countryside satirizes the Victorian society’s two-faced demeanor, and allows the bachelor to continue his dishonest, spurious lifestyle.

The relationship between Jack and Gwendolen undergoes a parody. Gwendolen laughs when Jack asks how she might feel if his name is not Earnest. "Ah, that is clearly a metaphysical speculation", she says, "and like all metaphysical speculation, has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them."(18) This remark of Gwendolen exactly fits the general theme of the play, but in fact the joke is directed to her. Yet at the end of the play, Gwendolen's conviction that she will marry an Earnest and her faith in the name are justified- we understand that Jack's true name is Earnest. The effect

Oscar Wilde is revealing the narrow-mindedness of society’s standards for social ranking in his play, The Importance of Being Earnest. This idea of needing the most ideal lifestyle in every aspect was portrayed in the characters personalities and opinions throughout the play. It was most apparent when Mr. Worthing was attempting to be engaged to Miss Gwendolen Fairfax. Although having a favorable lifestyle, Mr. Worthing was denied for two standards he did not meet. The first was for his lack of knowledge of his family line, although he had no control over the situation. He was next denied by Gwendolen herself for not acquiring the most optimal name in her opinion, Ernest, which again, was out of his hands. Aaron Drucker states, “The Importance

The Importance of Being Earnest is set in the Victorian Era where social class is important. Social interactions were independent within an upper class and the lower class. The upper class kept their social interaction strictly within their class. When it came to the issue of marriage, it was the same. People in the upper class would only marry in their respected class in order to maintain or improve their financial status. Names were important because of their reputations in the upper class. Being Earnest is important because it inspires confidence regardless of its commonality within the upper class.

Gender fluidity through the characters’ personalities and actions is subtly utilized in both plays to comment on the social traits expected of both sexes. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack and Algernon exhibit immature personalities through their Bunburying. When Algy says to Jack, "I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose" (Wilde, 301), it demonstrates Algernon’s yearning for an aesthetic life free from the social correctness. The same behaviour is seen in Jack through his creation of Ernest, and Algy’s comment on Jack being “one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know” (|Wilde ?301). Their desire to escape the monotonous routine of their daily lives reveals their

The dramatic ironies in “The Importance of Being Earnest” add to the humor of the play. At the very start of the play, the readers only have limited information about the characters. When Jack visits Algernon in his house, the readers are taken along not knowing any knowledge of the events beforehand. They learn along with Algernon that Jack has a make believe brother whose name is Ernest, and Jack uses Ernest in order to get out of many situations as well as an excuse to not be a proper gentleman at times. Algernon learns that Jack’s real name is not Ernest, but that it is really Jack. However, the readers are given the privilege of knowing Jack’s true name from the very beginning. Then Algernon confesses to his “bunburying,” which is essentially the fact that he has a made up friend who is ill in order that Algernon can use him as an excuse to free himself from unpleasant social scenes. The action continues when Jack becomes engaged to Gwendolen under the false pretenses of the name Ernest. Skipping forward, Algernon visits Jack’s niece, Cecily, at Jack’s house in the countryside. Here is one of the first instances of dramatic ironies. Algernon introduces himself to Cecily as Ernest, Jack’s younger wild brother. The readers know that he is not, and that Ernest is made up in the first place. This creates humor due to the suspension it builds. The reader anticipates when Cecily will find out the truth, and how it will affect her. The plot thickens when Jack announces to Canon Chasuble that his brother Ernest is dead, while at the same time Algernon is pretending to be Ernest at Jack’s home. Once again this creates suspension because the reader has