... to laugh at it. This is comedy at its best. "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People" as Oscar would say. The Importance of Being Earnest has many major characters. Jack Worthing is a friend of Algernon; he loves Gwendolen and believes his name is Earnest. Algernon Moncrieff is a good friend of Jack and a nephew of Lady Bracknell; he also falls in love with Cecily. Gwendolen ... on a peaceful note and they live happily ever after. One major theme in The Importance of Being Earnest is the use of satire. Throughout the play, the word earnest serves a double meaning. It's used as a male name a...

• Word Count: 1981
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... twisting plot, and light-hearted criticisms of Victorian aristocracy that Wilde achieves truly sharp humor that creates a whirlwind of laughter throughout his audience. The relationship between being earnest and being called Ernest is a major comic relief in the play. This simple play on words is most vibrant when Cecily and Gwendolen both confide to Algernon and ... alone. Thus proving that earnestness is simply useless, while love and playfulness invokes happiness. The layers of irony that exist within the plot alone of The Importance of Being Earnest provides for some laughs as well. ...

• Word Count: 631
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... set in the Victorian Age at around the 1890s. This book takes place in London England. The Importance of Being Earnest has many major characters. Jack Worthing is a friend of Algernon; he loves Gwendolen and believes his name is Earnest. Algernon Moncrieff is a good friend of Jack and a nephew of Lady Bracknell; he also falls ... both Algernon and Jack find out they are named Earnest because their father in the military was named Earnest. The play ends on a peaceful note and they live happily ever after. One major theme in The Importance of Being Earnest is the use of satire. Throughou...

• Word Count: 525
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... are very few true comedies that have not mastered the art of irony. Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest may be the biggest example of a comedy that has mastered irony. Irony blends the play between humor and social commentary ... interpreted to be some form of irony. Wilde depicts his ironic tone mostly through his many obscure, yet thoughtful, characters. The characters in The Importance of Being Earnest truly define irony, and the irony in this play truly defines the characters. Primarily are the two main characters of the play, Jack and ... are totally self consumed, ...

• Word Count: 1025
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... of Art over Nature. Whilst they were written during the Victorian era, modern audiences can still relate to the texts, through the eternal themes that are portrayed. In The Importance of Being Earnest, John Worthing adopts the name Ernest to win beautiful Gwendolen's love. Unfortunately, Gwendolen's love for John stems from her infatuation for the name Ernest. Meanwhile, Algernon, John's friend, disguises ... this play, Wilde attempted to spread the ideas of looking at life from a different angle, and opening the shutters of Victorian society, and hence liberate individual expression. I...

• Word Count: 663
• Approx Pages: 3

... the maker of beautiful things. With his emphasis on beauty, Wilde spent little time cataloguing the gritty details of industrializing England, as did so many of his contemporaries. The Importance of Being Earnest, like so many of his works, focused on the elite, and while making fun of their absurdities and excesses, it also reveled in their witty banter and rambunctious lives ... , and so "earnestly" concerned with the maintenance of social norms and the status quo that it had become almost inhuman. In the figure of Lady Bracknell in particular, The Importance of Being Earnest lightly s...

• Word Count: 946
• Approx Pages: 4

Algy In Oscar Wilde's classic play, "The Importance of Being Earnest", the reader is introduced to an importantly funny man by the name of Algernon. Algernon, a free speaker, makes his opening appearance by asking his servant, Lane, if she had heard ... ...

• Word Count: 486
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... ,but their difference was that Wild used it to define an aesthetic point and Shaw used it to present ideas. As far as "The importance of being Earnest" is concerned,the play satirizes the aristocracy of the time,the upper class.Who's life's are concerned with manners and customs.The characters lie ... with love and better social status but later they find out that they haven't been lying at all.Jack in saying that his name is Earnest,at the end of the story is found to be telling the truth as it is revealed to him and Algernon's lie of being Jack ... this "earnestness" as the characters ...

• Word Count: 1116
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Oscar Wilde uses his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, as a way of showing how ridiculous the Victorian era's views were, especially its views on marriage. In his play, Wilde shows how the Victorian Era aristocracy ... may cause some sort of societal back lash. The women themselves are also preoccupied with collective standards that they couldn't even imagine themselves marrying anyone other then a person named Earnest. This shows that the women are more concerned with the futility of a name then with what really needs to matter in a marriage, love. Wilde uses their characters to ... for...

• Word Count: 627
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

The Importance of Being Earnest is a famous play by Oscar Wilde. It describes a story of two young men who get tired of their daily lives ... accidently the same as they plan in the end, they learn that it is always important to be earnest. The whole play is full of great humor, and Wilde tries to express the importance of being earnest through different ways in the play. In this essay, I try to explore what different attitude each ... . As time goes by, it gradually becomes mature. At first, their visions of love are ideal. Cecily falls in love with a person named "Earnest" although she nev...

• Word Count: 1058
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... all the trivial things of life seriously and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality." This essay investigates how far "The Importance of Being Earnest" reflects this view on life. Oscar Wilde subtitled his play "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People". The play is a comedy of manners satirising the ... young upper class ladies, who in turn desire only to marry men named Ernest. The play is one of dual meanings throughout. Earnest of the title is an adjective describing seriousness. Jack and Algernon are characters who lie in order to be Ernest, but in doing so t...

• Word Count: 2564
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... and social conditions, Wilde chose to ridicule the life of the English aristocracy. This attitude can be clearly seen in his play The Importance of Being Earnest'. In this piece of work, some of the important themes discussed are that of marriage and respectability. Indeed, one can infer that ... from the heart, it was decided for the girl on the basis of social status. As far as respectability is concerned in The Importance of Being Earnest' the people living during the Victorian age were extremely prudish. There were many social norms on how people had to behave in society especially...

• Word Count: 523
• Approx Pages: 2

Oscar Wilde's comedy, "The Importance of Being Earnest," satirizes issues such as marriage, money, and death throughout the play.Wilde mocks the idea of marriage during the confrontations between Lady ... instead of those regarded as serious. Lady Bracknell is the quintessence of society in the Victorian era. She believes that social status is of the utmost importance and that marrying someone without money is absurd. When she finds out that her nephew, Algernon intends to marry Jack's ward, Cecily, she is taken ... a serious issue, but Wilde makes his characters play death off as an unimport...

• Word Count: 732
• Approx Pages: 3

... on severe ethical standards. He became well known for his wit and humor in his poems, plays, and novel. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde did not disappoint. In this comedy and satirical drama of manners, "The Importance of Being Earnest," makes fun of everything the Victorian society seems to consider sacred and essential for life. The play is narrated in three different ... have endured through time. Throughout the play, there are countless areas of criticism Oscar Wilde brings to light that exist in the society; however, one may maintain that The Importance of Being Earnest i...

• Word Count: 963
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography

Marxist Criticism on The Importance of Being Earnest Excuse me Geoffrey, could you get me some more water. I'm terribly thirsty, and the weather out here isn't doing any good for my complexion. declares the man as he sighs ... the rich and poor, the owner and the worker. This is even demonstrated by the literature of our time and that of other era's, such as the play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. In this play Wilde display's the class structure with a different and interesting twist. He makes a reflection on the society with his own sense of humor, but ... , and not strivin...

• Word Count: 1398
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

The Importance of Being Earnest The overall production of The Importance of Being Earnest was very interesting. The beginning moved rather slowly, but the play progressed as it went on. There were a few mistakes from the performers that I noticed, but they did an excellent ... . They meet two girls, which they decide they want to marry. The only reason these girls want to marry them is because they told their girlfriends their names were both Earnest. They don't want to marry any guy with just an ordinary name. In the end the two girls talk and ask the guys which one was going to be the ... ...

• Word Count: 586
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

The importance of being Earnest is a satire by Oscar Wilde where being earnest simply means having the name Earnest. The film dramatization of Wilde's renowned play is a comedy of manners and what is quite comic is the way it is structured. It is a series of verbal fencing matches where ... London and the English Country Side. It all starts in Algernon's apartment in London. His friend Jack, who for reasons embodying the farcical nature of the play adopts an identity "Earnest", wants to marry his cousin Gwendolen. Jack proposes to Gwendolen who accepts, but her mother Lady Bracknell disappro...

• Word Count: 345
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

... ". In the Victorian era, wives, daughters and sisters were left at home all day to oversee the domestic duties that were increasingly carried out by servants. In The Importance of Being Earnest, however, this is not always the case, as gender role reversal is a common theme throughout the play, which naturally leads to comedy, as during the Victorian Era in the ... between Lord and Lady Bracknell, Lady Bracknell seems to be the one in charge with the most power, therefore giving her the upper hand. However, Lady Bracknell places very high importance on following social etiquette, which s...

• Word Count: 2043
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... nonsense." "Nobody ever does." As the first act comes to a rather confusing end, John and Algernon reveal the secret of the play; nothing is exactly as it seems. The Importance of Being Earnest is a highly exaggerated play called a farce, which revolves around the plot of two available bachelors who find themselves in an unusually complicated "love knot." The characters John and Algernon ... . In the end of the play, the audience is led to believe that there will be a marriage between Ernest and Gwendelon as well as between Algernon and Cecily. The Importance of Being Earnest is a very c...

• Word Count: 1572
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

The great play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, can be described as a timeless play because many of its context can be related to today's world. People these days are not saints, they lie about things ... mine- comes in play here because when people do that, they often do not think about the long term consequences and how it can affect other people. Overall, The Importance of Being Earnest can be tied to today's life in more then one way. By reading this story people can also see that not much is changed, and even though people laugh ... ...

• Word Count: 1242
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST The Importance Of Being Earnest written by Oscar Wilde is the type of book, which is very comical. This book takes place in London, a country house I Hertfordshire, and England; the 1890's. The book is mainly ... in the closet. While I was in the library, I asked my friend if she could name some books that she read that are really good. She named a few then said "The Importance of Being Ernest", that rang a bell in my head. I didn't know the author's name, but I knew that I knew the book. As soon as I got home I ran to the closest, took ... ...

• Word Count: 628
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... at the heart of the most effective academic habits. Does a student learn best through listening or reading? Are facts understood best by outlining the readings or taking spoken or written notes? Is the creation of flash-cards a useful and efficient habit for vocabulary? Is attempting practice questions in math class more useful than creating a step-wise, structured approach to problem solving ... development of academic habits because to succeed at improving one's abilities in a sport one must take the many smaller, often repetitive practice steps that can be thought of as habits. Earne...

• Word Count: 2341
• Approx Pages: 9

Expect the Unexpected Throughout Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest- various different literary devices are very effectively and skillfully used. Most of these literary devices create a sense of comedy in the book. One that especially puts a light hearted tone into ... asks him to produce one. Quite the simple idea, but the logic is anything but correct, it is severely inverted, and plays a huge role in creating the comedy in "The Importance of Being Ernest-. Another character that embraces inverted logic as though it was a way of life is Algernon Moncrieff. Algy, as he is calle...

• Word Count: 1133
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... with a very good sense of humor as a joke. In Dillard's essay she leaves you questioning whether everything on this earth was made in jest or in earnest. She uses her own experiences in trying to answer this question. Is this question just one of life's unanswered questions? We can all come to our own opinion ... is still trying to make sense of the scene she just witnessed is "If the giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then made in earnest?"(224) By that question she means that the creator could of either created this animal as a good thing, or as a bad thing intentionally plac...

• Word Count: 1302
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Enter Jack (p33-36) look at this scene and write about the comic potential. The Importance of Being Earnest is used by Oscar Wilde as a vehicle for wit and an opportunity to satirise the culture and prejudices of the time. It also allows Wilde to convey his opinions concerning ... ...

• Word Count: 704
• Approx Pages: 3