The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest

By Fatima F. Dominguez Aburto Huesca.

Oscar Wilde was a British writer who incur in many types of writing, such as prose, poetry and theater plays. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is one of the last plays that he wrote.

This play tells the story of John (or Jack), his friend Algernon, his love for Gwendolen and how a name can change a lot of things and perceptions. Jack is a young man who in London always present himself as Earnest. ¿The reason? He has created this character for release himself of the stress of some situations. The problem comes because he is in love with the cousin of his friend Algernon, Gwendolen, and he decides to propose to her. Algernon, or Algy, found out that he is not Earnest but John and reveal that he also has a character like that, Bumbury, and for that reason he start wanting to bother a little to Jack. Jack is tired of Earnest and decides to “kill” him. But… Will that be all right? Or will Jack learn how big is the importance of being Earnest?

This play is definitely fun and easy to read, which is not that common in plays, because you can sympathise or not understand the characters but in any case they are interesting.  Every character in this play had a very particular personality and idiosyncrasy to very unique things. This make that their interaction with each other flow in very singular ways, just like the odd friendship between Algy and Jack, and make the play, somehow, very dynamic.

Oscar Wilde always created characters that shown his own particularities and the way in which he perceived the society around him. This is the main reason why in all his works you can find many thing that has a vizar point of view of what is important and what is not. Of course that “The importance of Being Earnest” is not an exception for this and because of that some of the situations are hilarious.

In my opinion for being easy to read and imagine, interesting and very fun, I will give this book 5 of 5 stars.