Comparing and Constrasting Jack and Algernon

Comparing and Constrasting Jack and Algernon

In this Essay I will compare and contrast the characters of Jack and

Algernon. I will do this by looking at their behaviour and attitudes

towards f food, marriage, women, social class, education and money. I

will endeavour to show that these characters are not dissimilar as we

might first be led to believe.

I will use both the text as well as the modern film version to prove

my ideas.

Algernon Moncrief lives in an expensive flat located in Half-Moon

Street. He is a very emotive character just like Wilde himself.

As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte.

We think he is rich, which, however, soon, especially in the modern

film version, is proven to be wrong. Right at the start people who he

owes money chase him.

Also his butler Lane complains about him not paying his lone.

Algernon comes from a rich family. His aunt, Augusta Bracknell, is

very rich.

In order to keep up his live style and his place in society he has to

dine with his aunt a fair few times. Too often in his opinion.

"I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough"

It shows us that Algernon expects a lot, a high standard of living but

is not prepared to do anything to achieve and to deserve it. He wants

it presented to him on a salver.

Dining with his aunt is even too much.

Algernon is not serious at all. He loves talking about everything,

making comments and statements and expressing his opinion to

everything. He has a rich aunt and does not need to worry about

anything, except for what he is going to eat.

Jack is also fortuned. He inherited some money from the late Mr Thomas

Cardew. A wealthy man who found him the cloakroom of Victoria station...

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... being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy". Gwendolyn

and Cecily are attracted by the wicked and disreputable backgrounds of

Algernon and Jack and are not really interested in who they really

are, as long as their name is Ernest.

Cecily keeps a diary and in her diary she is already engaged to

Algernon(Ernest) months before he has asked her to marry him. On the

14th of February last.

"Worn out by your entire ignorance of my existence, I determined to

end the matter one way or the other, and after a long struggle with

myself I accepted you under this dear old tree here"

Cecily hates education. She does not want to learn and so this shows

that she does not want to use or waste it. This can also be shown, as

she writtes a diary and says that she does not trust her memory. She

likes reading and writing her diary which is like her memory.