Moral Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Moral - Essay Example The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest centers around deception. Algernon is a wealth bachelor that lives in London. He often pretends to have a friend Bunbury who is sick and lives in the country. Whenever Algernon wishes to escape certain social utieshe is explains that he simply can no because he has to visit his sick friend. He can then escape and enjoy the pleasures that Victorian society called improper. However, his friend, Bunbury, does not exist. Through this form of deception Algernon not only gets pity from his friends he also has the perfect excuse to do whatever he wants. Algernon's believes his best friend is named Ernest. Ernest is actually John Worthing. John Worthing is also using deception to escape his restrictive and boring existence. He tells his friends that he has a wayward brother who lives in London and is often in trouble. Therefore he must go to London to bail his brother out. When John is in London he goes by the name of Ernest. He pretends to be a go od man in country only to be a adan in the city. John wants to marry Gwendolen, but she wants to marry a man named Ernest. When she meets John using the name Ernest she falls deeply in love with him. Gwen's aunt insists on knowing his family background and he is forced to reveal that is real parents left him at a train station and he was adopted by a rich upstanding Victorian family. Algernon has the idea that he will go into the country to visit John and pretend to be Ernest. He is unaware that John has given up his city life and has planned the tragic (but unreal) death of his brother. Deception plays a vital role in this play. If John and Algernon did not lie there would be no play. If each character followed the Victorians standards of society, there would be no plot. While this play is a comedy, Wilde's point is clear: only through deception can people exist in Victorian society. If they did not use deception everyone would surely die from boredom and the suffocating grasp of s ociety. Similarly, Shakespeare Hamlet is based on deception. Hamlet begins with the death of the King of Denmark. He has been killed by his wife and brother. It is Hamlet who is first deceived by his mother. She gets married without telling Hamlet. When Hamlet arrives he is disgusted by his mother's actions. The role of deception is seen throughout the play. Hamlet pretend to be crazy, he pretends not to love Ophelia, and pretends not to know that his mother killed his father. Claudius and Gertrude pretend to care for Hamlet only to try to have him killed. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern pretend to be Hamlet's friends but are really acting like spies for the king. Deception in Elsinore is a symptom of disease society where ambition and greed run rampant and uncontrolled. All the characters in Hamlet must lie to survive and in the end deception kills them all. The societies in Importance of Being Earnest and Hamlet are both portrayed as corrupt. In amletthe court of Elsinore is the representative evil society. It is a toxic environment that breeds blind ambition, betrayal, and evil. Hamlet comments "'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed; Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely" (Shakespeare Act I, sc ii). Claudius and Polonius are to of the top officials in Elsinore and therefore responsible for the destruction of a good society and the