Scene Analysis- The Importance of Being Earnest The novel “The importance of being Earnest” is an excellent read involving a lot of farce, portraying the characters in the book as frivolous and full of hypocrisy. The characters in the book tend to be extremely superficial and dumb. These characters focus on materialistic stuff and appearance, and also touch on very social (and mostly controversial) topics, such as marriage and health. The idea that these characters and their actions/words are larger than life (not realistic) is portrayed throughout the whole text, this essay will analyze specific quotes taken from a specific scene that demonstrate Wilde 's intentions with his representations of each character. There is satire, which is used
(NE; bk.8; ch.3) True friends must be virtuous, therefore bad and un-virtuous men cannot be true friends. Another factor in Aristotle 's perfect friendship is equality; equality in age, station, and gender.
Forgiving and trying to relieve each other’s guilt is friendship. Recognizing an accident due to paranoia is also part of friendship. You might be scared to tell your friend the truth, but your best friend should always forgive you. In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, we see a strong friendship weaken due to one accident. Gene should have confessed to Finny about his involvement in the jouncing on the tree branch.
In the play “The Importance Being Earnest” Oscar Wilde wants to show that the caricature on high society. The play was in the 1800’s. A caricature is a charter or a physical fentress that exaggerates by making it bigger or smaller to make a person notice and laugh to show their weakness. Oscar Wilde makes us think if it’s really important to be earnest ? The story is about two boys that want to be named Earnest, so because of that they have a double life and they will need to handle the problems.
Looking at Gene and Finny’s friendship experience, equality should not be overlooked at between two friends. Lastly, one should not be friends with someone whom they see as a competition or threat to their
While many have been familiar with the title of the play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, one should also pay attention to its subtitle, ‘trivial comedy for serious people’. The play is a satire that ridicules the upper class to point out its fault (Kreuz and Roberts 100).The aim is to ridicule the ‘serious people’, members of the upper class in Victorian society. The characters were too attentive to social propriety and etiquette, which were as trivial as the comedy suggests in the eyes of Wilde. As they were too stubborn to alter the behaviour, the propriety and etiquette became superficial and meaningless. Their idleness and hypocrisy are other points at which Wilde recurrently mock in the play.
The young man describes Mrs. Moreen as a woman that “spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of the aristocracy.” This indicates that he believes that Mrs. Moreen believes that she is superior to him as she focuses on aristocracy and the hierarchy of the society. He is very conscious of this perception and this contributes to his issues of being insecure and nervous about approaching the subject of his salary. In addition, the third person limited point of view shows the young man’s paranoia surrounding the teaching of the student as he is worried that the student will “prove cleverer than himself.” This adds to the degrading and ironic tone as it shows that not only is the narrating mocking him, but there is reason for it as he himself is doubtful of himself. He does not fit the typical mold of man in the late 1800s as he is supposed to in an authoritative position, but does not show confidence or assertiveness at all. In addition, to mocking his role as inferior position, there is the element of his profession.
In the Victorian Era, there were repressive and suffocating norms. Many people were cultivating a double life to be able to escape from their restrictive obligations in a respectful way. In The Importance of being Earnest, Oscar Wilde creates scenes where the characters, Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing, live secret lives to make a false impression about who they really are. Both characters are unsatisfied with their social lives by participating in boring dinners and living a typical Victorian family life, which leads them to create a double life that helps them escape from their social class. In Act 1, Algernon tells Jack, “You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able to come up to town
One of Oscar Wilde’s vital goals in The Importance of Being Earnest was to expose the many facades of The Victorian Era. The play set in the 19th century and it is the exact replica of the West End of London. This consequential era began in 1837, year in which Queen Victoria ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom, and lasted until the first few years of the twentieth century. Often, in Victorian England its residents would be perpetrators of the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ a crime that simply means the residents will be heavily acquainted with all the social graces and no one will truly know anyone’s intentions. His play satirizes the society’s “shallow mask of manner” in its moral customs, hence conceived a society estranged from its
In Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, we can easily figure out that marriage is an important theme that ironically criticizes the Victorian society, especially the Victorian moral values and social values. It will be difficult for us to define those marriages are derived from “business” or “pleasure” throughout this play. As long as we can find out the meaning lying behind, the problem will be easily solved. This essay is going to justify whether each of those selected marriages from the play can be categorized as a marriage for business or pleasure. Tracing back to Victorian period, the aristocrats were all well-educated and they wanted to develop their own economic power through the marriage to the one from middle class.