The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde Essay Example for Free

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde Essay Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is about a young man who leads a double life, in whenever he wants to escape the reality, along with his obligations and real-life dealings. The story is not just about the life of the young man, Jack, also known as Ernest, but it is also about taking life in a more serious way. In order to do so, Oscar Wilde has reformed or improved the parts of life that he has satirized in the story. One aspect which Wilde has reformed in the story was in the life of Jack/Ernest. He is described as a seemingly responsible and respectable young man. He is also well-off, as he owns a country estate. But at some time in the story, it was found out that Jack was an adopted child, and that he was found in a handbag by the train station. Jack’s past and his present life is so ironic that it effectively builds up his character. It is both amusing and surprising that for a baby who was supposedly left alone in a train station would be able to survive and be successful when he grows up. Jack have almost everything that he desires, wealth, fame among those who know him, love in the person of Gwendolen; so who would ever think that a person like him was adopted as he was abandoned in the train station as a child? Oscar Wilde reformed Jack/Ernest character in order to make the story much more interesting. Despite his somewhat unlikely past, he is now a wealthy man, leading a happy life. If his character wouldn’t be reformed or improved, he wouldn’t be rich or attractive, following the fact that he was an abandoned child. The interesting part of the story though is not his rags-to-riches life; instead it was his double life that he leads, in the form of Ernest. Another one Wilde’s reform to the character he was satirizing was when the issue of marriage was introduced in the story. Jack Worthing is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, and so is Gwendolen to Jack. But the problem is that Gwendolen fell in love with Jack because of her fixation to the name Ernest. Jack introduced himself to Gwendolen as Ernest for her to love him, but he still has to face his problem, as Gwendolen intends to marry only the man whose name is Ernest. Oscar Wilde reformed Jack’s character by actually trying to become Ernest: his alter ego that he uses as a scapegoat to preserve his morality as Jack Worthing. For Jack, the name Ernest is his way to keep an honorable image in place. By using Ernest, Jack is able to escape his real life, as he is bound by duties and obligations, as well as a reputation he must protect. Ernest actually provides Jack with an excuse he conveniently uses whenever he wants to do things that he can do when he is under his real identity. It is also his disguise, as Jack wants to remain being seen as upright and moral, and with Ernest as his mask, he is able to misbehave. His character is reformed when it was the time for him to make the choice: to be Ernest or be Jack. It was love that drove him to that deciding corner, as Gwendolen was evidently in love with him being Ernest, and he is not sure if she would still love him if he is Jack. In the end, Jack apologized to Gwendolen, which she returns with forgiveness, saying that she did so because she is sure that Jack would change to make up for his mistakes. The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde’s way of satirizing the general tolerance for hypocrisy in the Victorian concept of morality, and this is shown by the character Jack Worthing. He wants to adhere with notions of duty, honor, and respectability, yet he lives a double life, Ernest, hypocritically flouting those notions.

College Dorms :: essays research papers

College Dorms Message: The inventor of dormitories...let's find him, make him pay for the travesties he's visited on America's youth, and force him to listen to Matchbox 20. Can't you see him designing these hellish stacks of humanity many years ago? From the sidewalk he raised his hands triumphantly and said, "It shall be like the projects with less violence and more marijuana!" He then took lumber and Elmer's Paste, as it is often called, to create these pet carrier sized rooms that we live in. You wanna know why people from the projects hardly ever go to college? It's because they don't want to leave their lush surroundings. The actual term dormitory is of course derived from the Latin term for sleep, which is appropriate because that is all you have space to do. You have to do it standing up in the bathroom sink but it can be done. The luckier students have space to scratch their assses but the windows have to be open and their roommates have to be gone for the weekend. When you go home the closets even feel like a gymnasium, and you can romp around in the bathroom like a horny antelope. I can't imagine the kids who brought everything they own to the dorm. I brought like a condom and a sock. Next semester I hope to have a towel and the other sock. I also need a new condom. Forget having space to sleep. Who sleeps anyway? Nobody on my campus. I think it's a rule. This one kid tried but no one knows what happened to him. Let's just say his floor mates never saw him awake again. I feel like I'm a member of the national insomnia coalition. 0ur agenda involves a lot of Frappaccino and staring at the test pat tern on TV. It's like this strange pseudo-vampire lifestyle. Did you know that if you stay up late enough they play the Tonight Show over again and it still isn't funny? No sleep really fucks with your eating habits too. Every night at 2 in the morning you get as hungry as a Bosnian and you have to go to the vending machine to watch the one bagel spin in the carousel of salmonella. People have White Zombie playing until 5 AM, which to me really encompasses my mood at 5 AM. I could be listening to Kenny G and it would seem hardcore at 5 in the morning.

Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave

â€Å"Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave? † was first published in the Saturday Review on September 27, 1913, then in Thomas Hardy’s 1914 collection, satires of Circumstance: Lyrics and Reveries with Miscellaneous Pieces. The poem reflects Hardy’s interest in death and events beyond everyday reality, but these subjects are presented humorously, with a strong dose of irony and satire. This treatment is somewhat unusual for Hardy, who also produced a number of more serious poems concerning death. In â€Å"Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? † a deceased woman carries on a dialogue with an individual who is disturbing her grave site. The identity of this figure, the â€Å"digger† of the woman’s grave is unknown through the first half of the poem (Ruby 1). As the woman attempts to guess who the digger is, she reveals her desire to be remembered by various figures she was acquainted with when she was alive. In a series of ironic turns, the responses of the digger show that the woman’s acquaintances a loved one, family relatives, and a despised enemy have all forsaken her memory. Finally it is revealed that the digger is the woman’s dog, but the canine too, is unconcerned with his former mistress and is digging only so it can bury a bone. Though the poem contains a humorous tone, the picture Hardy paints is bleak. The dead are almost completely eliminated from the memory of the living and do not enjoy any form of contentment This somber outlook is typical of Hardy’s verse, which often presented a skeptical and negative view of the human condition (Ruby 1). Hardy was born in 1840 and raised in the region of Dorestshire, England, the basis for the Wessex countryside that would later appear in his fiction and poetry. He attended a local school until he was sixteen, when his mother paid a lot of money for him to be apprenticed to an architect in Dorchester. In 1862 he moved to London, where he worked as an architect, remaining there for a period of five years. Between 1865 and 1867 Hardy wrote many poems, none of which were published. In 1867 he returned to Dorchester and, while continuing to work in architecture, began to write novels in his spare time. Hardy became convinced that if he was to make a living writing, he would have to do so as a novelist (Ruby 2). Drawing on the way of life he absorbed in Dorsetshire as a youth and the wide range of English writers with which he as familiar, Hardy spent nearly thirty years as a novelist before devoting himself to poetry. In 1874 Hardy married Emma Lavinia Gifford, who would become subject of many of his poems. They spent several years in happiness until the 1880s, when marital troubles began to shake the closeness of their union. Hardy’s first book of verse was published in 1898, when he was fifty-eight years old and had achieved a large degree of success as a novelist. Although his verse was not nearly as successful as his novels, Hardy continued to focus on his poetry and published seven more books of verse before his death, developing his confidence (Ruby2). With the composition of the Dynasts: A Drama of the Napoleonic Wars (1904-08) an epic historical drama written in verse, Hardy was hailed as a major poet. He was praised as a master of his craft, and his writing was admired for its great emotional force and technical skill. Hardy continued to write until just before his death in 1928. Despite his wish to be buried with his family, influential sentiment for his burial in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey instigated a severe compromise: the removal of his heart, which was buried in Dorchester, and the cremation of his body, which was interred in the Abbey (Ruby 2). The structure of â€Å"Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? † is a familiar one, although not one commonly associated with poetry: the joke. A situation is established and briefly developed, then the punch line turns everything on its head. In Hardy’s bitter joke a dead woman has high- flown expectations of the living: her loved one will remain forever faithful to her; her family will continue to look after her exactly as they did in life: and even her enemy’s hatred will not wane. The poem’s punch line deflates her hopes and reveals them as vain and ridiculous. Hardy sets up his joke carefully, with a poet’s attention to the language he uses (Ruby 4). The atmosphere is set in the first two lines. A sigh from the grave seems to signal profound meditation on morality and love. The phrasing of the two lines is almost self-consciously â€Å"poetic. † Such language is maintained throughout the first three stanzas. Expressions like â€Å"planting rue,† â€Å"Death’s gin. † â€Å"The Gate that shuts on all flesh† portray feeling that is heightened, more sensitive and authentic than every day, emotion (Ruby 4). They awaken a sense of tragedy and compassion in the reader, But Hardy is merely setting us up for the punch line. They tone of the poem’s language begins begins to change in the fourth stanza. One hardly notices it, so great is the reader’s surprise that it was a little dog that was poeticizing all along. The first seeds of doubt have been planted: this poem may not be exactly what it at first seemed. The dead woman recognizes the dog’s voice and utters the article of faith she feels most deeply: a dog’s love outshines anything human (Ruby 4). But when the dog replies, the reader realizes that Hardy is up to something else. The â€Å"poetry† and sentimentality have vanished. The dog’s voice is as ordinary and plainspoken as that of the Wessex country folk. He deflates her last hope so offhandedly and without pretense that its effect is brutal. At the same time the dead woman’s expectations about her lover, her family and enemy are portrayed as products of the same ridiculous sentimental outlook (Hardy 4). â€Å"After coming to the end of ‘Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave? ’ the reader realizes that the title would have been more accurate even if less interesting if called, â€Å"Oh No One Is Digging on My Grave. ’ † (Ruby 10).

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