The Importance Of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy For Serious People

1567 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Oscar wilde the importance of being earnest essay

Affirmative Comedies
Comedy unites – It helps society relate to one another and adds to the interwoven-ness that invisibly threads us all together as a society. Comedies help underscore the sadness’ of life and enables playwrights to address problem in society and propose a solution. This problem solution construction is reoccurring in comedies. Comedies have endured the test of time as they continue to educate, influence, entertain and motivate humanity. Comedic works have been characterized as ending in all being right in the world. This notion is supported by the plays, Lysistrata by Aristophanes and The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar Wilde through their unique plot style, usage of literary and plot devices.
Comedies are important to the daily lives of people so we, as a society are not terrorized by fear to act. Often times in life people are faced with situations too difficult to face alone. Comedies empower people to relate to one another and know they are not alone in facing major problems. Take into account the Peloponnesian War; war is often brutal and terrifying. This enables people to become fearful and helpless. What comedies do is put a serious issues …show more content…

These parts, in both of the plays are: rising action, climax, falling action and denouement. The denouement in plays is the part where all the strands of a play are drawn together. In Lysistrata and The Importance of Being Earnest the plot’s composition is a critical element that aids in understanding their relationship to the notion that comedies end in affirmation. Lysistrata was originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC and is an account of one woman’s goal to end the Peloponnesian War. The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People was first performed in 1895, and is a story of the trial and joy of two friends who pursue a fictitious persona as a man named

Show More
Related

  • Why The Ending of Jez Buttersworth's Jerusalem Disqualifies it as a Comedy

    1589 Words  | 4 Pages

    According to Aristotle, “Comedy can be any colloquy or performance generally intended to amuse or stimulate laughter”. In modern times, comedy can be found in different forms, such as television, movies, theatres and stand-up comedy.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Steve Almond's Funny Is The New Deep

    892 Words  | 2 Pages

    Steve Almond’s “Funny is the New Deep” talks of the role that comedy has in our current society, and most certainly, it plays a huge role here. Namely, through what Almond [Aristotle?] calls the “comic impulse”, we as a people can speak of topics that would otherwise make many of uncomfortable. Almond deems the comic impulse as the most surefire way to keep heavy situations from becoming too foreboding. The comic impulse itself stems from our ability and unconscious need to defend and thus contend with the feeling of tragedy. As such, instead of rather forcing out humor, he implies that humor is something that is not consciously forced out from an author, but instead is more of a subconscious entity, coming out on its own. Almond emphasizes

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Being Earnest Laughter Essay

    642 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Importance of Being Earnest Written, written in 1854, by Oscar Wilde, discusses many social matters occurring in the 19th century. Since The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy, it “awakens thoughtful laughter” (George Meredith). This comedic play often awakens thoughtful laughter, or laughter that makes someone ponder more about important issues. One of many of the primary instances of this is created by the ideas of marriage and love is a social device during this era. The characters didn’t fall in love because there was a romantic spark or that they felt a love connection with one another, they fell in love because the people they loved had a specific name, history, physical characteristics or economic status.

    Read More

  • Humor In Alexander Weinstein's Saying Goodbye To Yang

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    Humor is more than just amusing entertainment to pass the time. Though jokes and witty banter can be shallow, humor can go deeper than surface level to convey messages to audiences who would otherwise be close-minded about certain ideas. Humor is a great tool to get audiences to change the way they think, feel, and act. In “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” Alexander Weinstein uses humor to criticize some of society’s faults such as the way it has become heavily reliant on technology, racially insensitive, and judgmental.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Being Earnest

    1249 Words  | 3 Pages

    AThe Importance of Being Earnest, a play written by Oscar Wilde, is set in England in the late Victorian era. Wilde uses obvious situational and dramatic irony within the play to satirize his time period. According to Roger Sale in Being Ernest, the title has a double meaning to it and is certainly another example of satire used by Wilde. With a comedic approach, Wilde ridicules the absurdities of the character’s courtship rituals, their false faces, and their secrets. Sale, 478.

    Read More

  • Gender and Consistency in "The Importance of Being Earnest"

    1833 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Importance of Being Earnest is regarded as one of the most successful plays written by Oscar Wilde, a great 19th century playwright. Oscar Wilde deals with something unique about his contemporary age in this drama. It addresses Victorian social issues, French theatre, farce, social drama and melodrama. All these factors influenced the structure of the play in a large scale. This play is basically a Victorian satirical drama showcasing the social, political, economic and religious structural changes that affected 18th century England. It was the time when British Empire had captured most part of the world including Oscar Wilde’s homeland, Ireland. The aristocrats of England had become dominant over the middle and poor class people and Wilde wrote plays with the motivation to encourage people to think against the English aristocracy and artificiality.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Death In The Importance Of Being Earnest

    1354 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Act III, it highlights the contrast of a person’s life, Bunbury, to an inanimate object, suggesting that Miss Prisms lost black bag and the discovery of that bag, is more important than being ‘dead’. This is not an unusal reference in comparison to all other themes, analogies and metaphors discussed in The Importance of Being Earnest, but it is another hidden reference that adds to the quantity, which makes it a questionable and curious point due to this scene being part of the closing Act, which demonstrates it large importance to

    Read More

  • Satire in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

    1998 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners, whereby Oscar Wilde uses satire to ridicule marriage, love and the mentality of the Victorian aristocratic society. It can also be referred to as a satiric comedy. What is a satire and what is Oscar Wilde trying to emphasize by employing it in his play? A satiric comedy ridicules political policies or attacks deviations from social order by making ridiculous, the violators of its standards of morals or manners. Usually, a satiric piece doesn't serve only as a form of criticism, but to correct flaws in the characters or to somehow make them better in the end.

    Read More

  • Free Essays - Comparing Time in Macbeth and As You Like It

    528 Words  | 2 Pages

    Comedy differs in the mood it approaches and addresses life. It presents situations which deal with common ground of man’s social experience rather than limits of his behaviour – it is not life in the tragic mode, lived at the difficult and perilous limits of the human condition.

    Read More

  • Compare and Contrast Comedy and Tragedy

    902 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a comparison of comedy and tragedy, I will begin by looking at narrative. The narration in a comedy often involves union and togetherness as we see in the marriage scene at the end of Midsummer's Night Dream. William Hazlitt tells us that one can also expect incongruities, misunderstandings, and contradictions. I am reminded of the play The Importance of Being Ernest and the humor by way of mistaken identity. Sigmund Freud tells us to expect excess and exaggeration in comedy. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal displays this excess both in language and in movements. Charles Darwin insists that in a comedy "circumstances must not be of a momentous nature;" whereas, Northop Frye identifies comedy as having a happy ending and using repetition that goes nowhere.

    Read More

  • The Comedy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

    444 Words  | 1 Pages

    Language or the way in which words are used is one of the most important components of a comedy. Through an intelligent use of word play and the ability to add

    Read More

  • Difficulty Distinguishing Between Comedy and Tragedy in Shakespeare's Plays

    471 Words  | 1 Pages

    Society generally defines a comedy as a piece a theatre with some good laughs, a problem posed, and a fabulous resolution, after which everyone lives pretty much happily ever after. We run into problems, though, when we try labeling a large group of Shakespearean plays as such. Few of his “comedies” have pretty, tidy little endings, and even fewer are devastatingly funny. Measure for Measure, for example, finishes off with men dying and a would-be nun possibly betrothed to a man she cares nothing about. Though there are some jokes, they’re few and far between. In fact, it would seem that Measure for Measure in today’s terms would be a kind of soap opera on a Friday afternoon: no one knows what will happen, but it sure won’t be good.

    Read More

  • Compare and Contrast Tragedy and Comedy

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    A tragedy is defined as beginning with a problem that affects everyone, i.e. the whole town or all the characters involved, the tragic hero must solve this problem and this results in his banishment or death [run-on sentence]. A comedy is defined as also beginning with a problem, but one of less significant importance. The characters try to solve the problem and the story ends with all the characters uniting in either a marriage of a party. Although these two genres are seen as being complete opposites of each other, through further analysis one can gather that though they are different certain similarities can also be seen.

    Read More

  • Essay About Comedy

    1048 Words  | 3 Pages

    If there is one way to bring a smile to someone’s face, it is laughter. Funny jokes, comical stunts, sarcasm- Every person is different when it comes to what makes them laugh. Some find dry humor comical. Others think sarcasm or joke-filled ranting are the best. ‘Comedy’ is such a broad term, broad enough to allow everyone to find something they find comical. In fact, ‘comedy’ includes a specific type of drama, one where the protagonist is joyful and happy endings are expected. Comedy is like a drug; it allows you to escape reality. When we say the word ‘comedy’ in the present, we are generally referring to a type of performance which provides humor. However, in its broadest sense, comedy has only one purpose: comedy makes people smile and

    Read More

  • The Importance of Humor

    354 Words  | 1 Pages

    Humor has been the source of entertainment throughout history. Today humor is practiced in movies, plays, songs, television shows and radio. Humor has brought fame and fortune to those who have mastered its power.

    Read More

More about The Importance Of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy For Serious People

Open Document