The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest sets out to address dishonesty while poking fun at the higher social classes during the Victorian age. When Lady Bracknell states, "It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he had been speaking nothing but the truth."The irony found in this is that we are told to speak the truth for most of our lives, but then it could be seen as a terrible thing. Dishonesty was largely involved with marriage; "A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it." This statement is saying that a man who marries and has not partied as well as lie and cheat, will not have a happy successful marriage. The word earnest plays a huge role throughout the book. In the beginning you are introduced to Jack's "brother" Ernest; but just as things began to fall out of place towards the end, Jack then realizes his name has been Ernest from the beginning. The irony in all of this was that something that was once a lie had held the truth all along. This relates back to the title of the play because it truly shows the "importance" of being Ernest/ Earnest. Being in the upper class largely related to pursuing pleasure, for instance once Bunbury dies Algernon no longer has the amount of freedom as he did with having Bunbury. This just comes to show that in order to find pleasure you must start with a few lies.

Through escalating lies and far too many fibs, the characters all show a side of dishonesty. Jack and Algernon create an alter ego in which they can go and party under one identity while keeping their clean image under the other. The rest of the characters seem to find a way to constantly manipulate and twist words in order to keep their image. The message in which Oscar Wilde is trying to convey is how a simple lie can arise to completely new problem.