4-17-07

I really enjoyed this play by Oscar Wilde. I thought it was extremely humorous with all the little comments by the characters. The really liked how Wilde intertwines all of the characters at the end. I did not see all of that unfolding in the conclusion of the play. He touches on reality. I feel that at least one point in every ones life they pretend to be someone they are not to one extent or another. Sometimes, when my friend and I go out, we introduce ourselves with alternate fun names and just make up our lives as the person we are talking to engages in conversation with us. We just do it to have some fun, and we never know if the guy we are talking to is really being himself either. This past weekend, at the bar, my friend and I got trapped, literally trapped in a booth on the inside of the booth, with a guy who was name dropping every celebrity in the tabloids and showing us pictures of his cat on his cell phone. We were totally put off and kept kicking each other underneath the table while waiting for an opportunity to escape. We are still talking about it and hope that he was Bunburrying himself, for his own sake.

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest discusses many issues of identity. I feel that Wild’s discussion of identity should be taken humorously on the surface, but seriously underneath. Wilde pokes fun at the idea of people being self shallow and only concerned with what is visible to others. The way the characters flit around with each other, trying to impress the higher members of society so they too can rise up in society is what goes occurs on the surface. We can laugh at the way the characters interact with each other, only because we are different from them and seem to have more depth. I feel that Wilde discusses the importance of identity by using the characters as an example of how society should not conduct themselves. At the end of the play, the characters are exposed for all coming from the bottom of society and being relate to each other. Through out the play, all the characters conducted themselves as if they were elite members of society with credible backgrounds. Wilde just shows that everyone comes from the same place no matter where they lift themselves in society.