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The Importance of Being Earnest
There are several important differences I can think of here. 1. Jack is dedicated to his ward, Cecily, and the life he lives under what he believes to be his real name and real persona is the life...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
In Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest, dramatic irony arises from the use of the name Ernest. At the beginning of the play, two friends, Jack and Algernon, are enjoying tea...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
It's an ironic play on words—just like his surname Worthing, implying "worthy," which is how best to describe his existence of outward respectability in the countryside. Yet Jack is neither...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
At the level of plot, Miss Prism is the governess who "lost" the man we come to know as Jack Worthing when he was a baby. That she then resurfaces as the tutor of his ward, Cecily Cardew, permits...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde was an avid satirist of what he viewed as the pretensions of upper-class Victorian society. His play The Importance of Being Earnest is not directly about the foibles of that society....
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Hyperbole is one of the techniques Oscar Wilde uses most often in The Importance of Being Earnest. Hyperbole—exaggeration for effect—enables Wilde to satirize the ridiculous ideas and behaviors...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
When Algernon makes this statement, he seems to imply that journalism is a field filled with relatively uneducated people (who have not been "at a University") and that these people believe,...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Oliver Parker's 2002 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play remains relatively true to its source material and does not compromise Wilde's satiric playfulness. The play points out and pokes fun at...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
In his satirical play The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde ridicules the superficiality of his Victorian society audience and their values and behavior. As his title suggests, Wilde...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
We can compare both plays by analyzing the importance of appearances and the constraints of morality within the plays. 1) The deception of surface appearances. In The Importance of Being Earnest,...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Despite her inauspicious beginning as Cecily's ironically unintelligent tutor, Miss Prism ends up being a hugely important character in the play, because she turns out to be the woman who...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is a play that satirizes many forms of Victorian conventions. Religion is no exception. For the upper class characters of the book, religion functions...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Although there are definite similarities between Jack and Algernon (Algy), including that both are "Bunburyists" and both pretend to be Earnest Worthing, Jack and Algy are quite different. While...
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The Great Gatsby
Jack and Algernon are similar in that neither seems to take morality very seriously. To be more specific, high Victorian moral standards haven't caused them to try to be better people; instead, it...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
One can definitely see elements of anarchy and individualism at work in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. First of all, much of the play lampoons the attitudes and manners of the upper...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
I think Jack has learned both. By the end of the play, Jack understands the importance of being Ernest, the man, because, in learning that his real name actually is Ernest, Jack acquires a family...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
I don't think there's any "hidden" meaning to Cecily. At a fairly young age, she is both innocent and quick-witted, uneducated and capable of intuiting the ways of the world. She is also hopelessly...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Cecily and Gwendolen are presented as character foils in this satirical play by Oscar Wilde. Both are supposedly engaged to a man named Ernest, a girlhood dream of them both, and both are victims...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Algernon has two reasons for suspecting Ernest's identity, and they reveal his use of both deductive and inductive logic. First, Algy is in possession of Ernest's cigarette case, which Ernest left...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Bunburying is a word Algernon coins to represent the act of using a fictitious person as an excuse to avoid unpleasant interactions with others or to gain a sense of freedom for a short time....
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The Importance of Being Earnest
In Act 2 of The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde gains most of his humor through situational irony, that is, things that are the opposite of what is expected. At the beginning of the scene,...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
You will need to do several steps to complete this assignment: Choose, plan, draft, and revise/edit your essay. First, it is often difficult with an assignment like this to choose which essay to...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Lady Bracknell is Algernon Moncrieff's aunt and the mother of Gwendolyn, Jack Worthing's love interest. Also, at the end of the play, we find out that Jack and Algernon are actually brothers who...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
In Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, food symbolizes the appetite for power. Prior to this concluding scene in Act III, there are two other important “food scenes” that help...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
This statement by Algernon Moncrieff is part of the opening banter of the play. Algy has been playing piano, and he asks Lane, his butler, if he has been listening, which Lane denies. Algy then...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Wilde presents these characters via indirect characterization. No one directly describes Jack or Algernon; readers (or viewers) must mine their conversations for clues about their characters and...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is a melodrama because the characters and events are exaggerated. The exaggeration, as well as being satirical and critical of Victorian society, is...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Most of the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde are based on the prototypical stock characters of Roman comedy. They are often used for humorous effect. Some of the stock...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
This is a great question, and I'm excited to answer it. Oscar Wilde was a very flamboyant character himself, and his works are always fun to read. His writing is even more engaging if you are...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Frederick Chasuble is a Rector who agrees to christen both Algernon and Jack with the name Ernest. As a member of the Primitive Church, Chasuble is sworn to live without engaging in matrimony, a...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Hyperbole is a type of figurative language that uses exaggeration for emphasis or humor. Much of the humor in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is either hyperbole, understatement, or...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
First, there is a problem with a statement to the effect that "literary critics" value uniqueness. While some literary critics do, others do not. In fact, the notion that originality is a virtue in...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
First, we should note that Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a British play, first performed on 14 February 1895 in London. The "tea ceremony" is a Japanese tradition, not a British...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest certainly qualifies as a comedy of manners. A comedy of manners is a work that humorously satirizes the manners of a particular social group,...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
I assume that your question refers to the most recent film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play: the 2002 film starring Colin Firth as Jack and Rupert Everett as Algernon. In this case, there are no...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Yes, definitely! It might not be a laugh-out-loud, rolling-on-the-floor kind of laughter, but it is humorous and allows us to continue to sketch Algernon's character. First, Algernon tells Jack,...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Both drama and novels are a type of narrative; they have a story arc with rising action, a climax, and falling action. But each form has its own strengths and weaknesses. A drama is meant to be...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde was an important dramatic and literary figure of his age, and many of his works, like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome, dealt with weighty themes. The Importance of Being Earnest...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
As the complete title of the play specifies, The Importance of Being Earnest is "A trivia comedy for serious people." This means that those themes which are universally considered, or treated, in a...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
During Wilde's time, women still could not vote and the London aristocracy was clinging onto its traditions of marrying for money and social status. Parents and guardians were still very much a...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
The adopted selves in The Importance of Being Ernest are traditionally thought of as Oscar Wilde's commentary on the pretensions of Victorian society. Victorian society was highly moralistic and...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Lady Bracknell has just learned the the woman her nephew, Algernon, wishes to marry, Cecily Cardew, is very rich, and though she first opposed the match, when she finds out how wealthy Cecily is...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
The essence of Algernon's relationship with his manservant, Lane, can be found in the opening scene of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Near the beginning of the play, Lane offers a...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
This quote by Algernon describes Cecily and Gwendolen's first meeting in The Importance of Being Earnest. In order to understand how this meeting comes about it is important to understand the main...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
"Bunburying" references Algernon's imaginary friend whom he uses in the following way: "I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed in 1895, near the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. Victorian values such as respectability prevailed during the sixties and seventies, but...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
One of the most significant social criticisms that Oscar Wilde builds into this play is that he disagrees with the superficiality of the upper classes. We see this superficiality in many areas of...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
In the first act of the play, Algernon tells Jack that he has found the cigarette case Jack left behind the last time they were together. However, there is a great deal of drama about to whom the...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
In Oscar Wilde's farcical comedy of manners, when Lady Brackwell learns that Jack was found in a large, black leather hand-bag in a cloak-room at Victoria Station [a major train station in London],...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
In Act III, Scene I, both Cecily and Gwendolen confront Jack and Algernon as they enter from the garden. Cecily demands to know why Algernon pretended to be Jack's brother. When he answers that it...
