The Importance Of Being Earnest Irony Essay

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Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest is widely regarded today as one of the most profound and enduring plays ever created. Wilde manages to grip audiences with incredibly funny scenes, while still managing to inspire thought and puzzlement as a direct result of many of his expertly crafted lines. Using inversions of reality, epigrams, and particularly irony, Wilde has created a play that highlights Victorian society and beliefs in a subtextual, almost passive manner. In ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, irony, as well as twisted thinking, deliver shockingly accurate observations on society through double meanings and ironic passages. Whether it be characters describing ideals in counter-intuitive ways, mistaking identities, or pronouncing …show more content…
One such example of the hilarity that ensues following an ironic statement is when Algernon and Jack finally meet up in private, and discuss their trespassing: Jack: “You young scoundrel, Algy, you must get out of this place as soon as possible. I don’t allow any Bunburying here!” (Wilde 146)
This serves as an example of the hilarious implications that become apparent when the viewers know more than the characters do. In this case, Jack is scolding Algernon for leading a double life and “Bunburying” in his home. This, however, disregards the fact that Jack himself is the biggest Bunburyist in the play! Saying that he doesn’t support the practice of leading a double life in his home is extremely hypocritical and ironic, as it is Jack’s double life that is the premise of the entire work, with him being Jack in the country and Earnest in town. For him of all people, to suggest that Bunburying is not allowed is definitely cause for laughter. Oscar Wilde has chosen to use irony in such a fashion as this play is a comedy, designed to make the audience laugh at the veritable hypocrisy of Jack’s statement. Wilde’s clever usage of irony provides for many genuinely funny moments throughout the
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are used as a social criticism in The Importance of Being Earnest. “ I’ve now realized for the first time the vital The Importance of Being Earnest.“(Wilde 180). Jack stated after a long abundance of confusion and much controversy over to whom Earnest really was. The Importance of Being Earnest a play wrote in the Victorian era by author Oscar Wilde an incomprehensible man living in the 1800 hundreds wrote The Importance of Being Earnest to mirror his own life. A lot of Wildes…

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