"The Importance of Being Ernest"

“The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde focuses on the petty social customs and comical acts of deception in the late 1800s. The ironic comedy lends for a light tone. The movement of John Worthing, also known as Jack and Earnest, between Hertfordshire to London exposes the meaning of the work as a whole, the consequences of deception and lying. 

At Hertfordshire, Jack is known as Jack to his ward Cecily. Jack had conjured up a story that he has a brother, known as Ernest, that he goes to visit in London. This brother does not actually exist, but allows him to visit the lovely Gwendolen in London. In London, Jack is known as Ernest as to impress and court Gwendolen. This separation between reality and lies proves to cause comical issues throughout the play, as Cecily and Gwendolen figure out that Jack is not who he claims to be. The two different locations, London and Hertfordshire aid in this confusion. The distance and disconnect between Hertfordshire and London allows Jack to live two separate lives. 

The same way that Jack uses the two locations to be two different people, Algernon, Jack’s friends and Gwendolen’s cousin, uses the two locations to create two different personas as well. In London, Algernon is Algernon, but once he arrives at Hertfordshire, he pretends to be Jack’s “brother” Ernest. Again, the two different locations allow for deception. The comical conflict, if it can be called a conflict, is caused by engagement of Ernest to Cecily and Ernest to Gwendolen, an ironic situation. Once the two men attest to the usage of two identities, the conflict is then resolved in proper fashion, over the discussion of muffins.

A final example of the use of two different locations to create deception is created through the use of “Bunburying”. Algernon uses the term “bunburying” as a way to escape town and social events to visit his “sick friend” Bunbury. The distance between “Bunbury” and London allows Algernon to distance himself from London when he feels the needs to remove himself from social situations.

This play uses physical distance to create dissection. Algernon and Jack use the physical separation to live double lives, whether its be Jack as Ernest or Algernon visiting Bunbury, and to manipulated women through double personalities and names. The physical distance created confusion. The consequences of deception and lying, which in petty late 1800s upper-class style are just the two woman that they love refusing to speak to them for a short while, are caused by the separation between Algernon and Jack’s live’s in London and live’s in Hertfordshire.

Poetry Post

“One day i wrote her name upon the strand”
 Page 409-410
Edmund Spenser

         Personification of the tide and oceanic metaphor help to create the meaning of the poem, which is immortality. The wave is personified and given the ability to speak to the man. She calls him a “vain man” for believing that by writing the woman’s name in the sand over and over again it will make her immortal. She even says that she will “decay”and her “name will be wiped out likewise”. The personification of the wave creates conflict in the man’s mind, but then allows him to convince himself that him and his love will be immortal together. Where the wave believes that once she recedes back into the ocean she is gone forever, the man believes differently. He thinks that if he writes her name enough times she will be immortal. Even though the physical name can’t be seen anymore, it is still there.
         Oceans and waves are common metaphors for life. The rising and falling of the waves represent the highs and lows of life. In this poem, the crashing of the wave on to the shore and the receding of it back into the ocean are the main focus. The wave sees the life(itself) receding back into the ocean as it dying, but in the man’s eyes, part of it still lives on the shore. Even though the woman’s name has been washed away, it still remains. The fact that the scene depicted in the poem is at a beach where waves are metaphoric for life adds to the mans questioning of life and the time that a person has to live it. I found the imagery in this poem particularly beautiful and serene. The idea that he is writing her name into the sand in the hope of making her immortal is such an incredibly beautiful gesture. In addition to seeing the poem as an opinion of immortality, I also took it as the idea that even though the name may be gone, it is still there. Even when people leave or pass on, their presence and the effect he/she had on the people around them still remains.


 “The Death of a Soldier”
Page 410
Wallace Stevens

        The use of autumnal imagery, metaphor, and repetition of the phrase “As in a season of autumn” to portray the lack of individualism and the common occurrence of death. The autumnal imagery in the poem helps to set up for the metaphor of autumn as a symbol for death. Autumn is the end of life for the year as the earth prepares for the long, bitter, winter. It is a time of end and death. The speaker uses autumn to show that the same way that we do not put special celebration on every autumn, special celebration does not happen for every death. Some soldiers die and are never celebrated or mourned by all people. Autumn, as with all seasons, come and go without much thought. They can’t be prevented, the seasons just changed. Death is inevitable. The repetition of the phrase “As in a season of autumn” also helps to drive home the meaning of the poem.
         My favorite part of this poem is the final stanza. The use of the cloud imagery is very vivid to me. Even though the wind ceases to blow, the cloud continues on. Even though death occurs on the battlefield, the battle, and the war, continues to be fought. The comparison of the death of a soldier and the season of autumn was also very vivid to me. Although this is not a joyful poem, I find the phrasing of this poem and voice that I hear with in this poem to be almost beautiful.

As it can be seen through the picture below, the dress of Muslim women completely covers the whole body and the head as to not expose the women's body.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/40-women-killed-clothing-iraq-article-1.272312

The Handmaid's Tale

The dress of the Handmaids is very similar to what women are forced to wear in places, like Iraq, today. If women are caught without wearing their traditional dress and head scarves they are arrested and brutally killed in the Muslim culture. The Handmaid’s robes, which are a crimson red, not only represent fertility because they are red, but also represent a lack of freedom and choice. Women in The Handmaids Tale lack simple freedoms like being able to chose what they wear. Women in Iraq today also lack freedom and choice. They are controlled and degraded. The clothing chosen by the leaders of Gilead also represent control of people by the government. Margaret Atwood’s use of the concealing dress and head piece is clearly similar to Muslim attire for women. The patriarchal society portrayed in the novel is also very similar to Muslim culture. 

“Nevertheless Moira was our fantasy. We hugged her to us, she was with us is a secret, a giggle; she was lava beneath the crust of daily life. In the light of Moira, the Aunts were less fearsome and more absurd. Their power had a flaw to it. The audacity was what we liked,” (Atwood 133). 

Moira’s escape from the life of a Handmaid was a flaw in the power and the society of Gilead. Moira made a choice, one of the many things that Handmaids lack the ability to. Lava is such a striking image. It paints a picture of Moira on one side of the lava and the Aunts and creators of Gilead on the opposite side. The metaphor relating to the lava and the “crust of daily life” is meant to explain the fact that Moira escaped was a threat to the whole idea of the society Gilead was trying to create. Moira cunningly escaped and fractured Gilead’s power. Although it probably did not matter much in the long run, it gave Handmaids, like Offred, hope that they may have freedom one day. She gave them something to hope for: escape. 

The way Margaret Atwood portrays an important issue in the world today is creative and extremely effective. Her use of extremism brings across her point-the lack of women’s freedoms in many cultures in modern day- in a riveting way. The speaker of the novel, Offred, is the type of character that is easy to connect with. Throughout the novel, the daily hardships that Offred encounters are so painful that she considers suicide. The idea that a women today is so suppressed that her only choice is suicide is frightening, but Margaret Atwood knew that it was happening when she wrote the novel. Even though it was written in 1998, not much had changed in second and third world countries today. The Handmaid’s Tale exposes what happens when women’s rights are removed and they are seen solely as objects of cleaning, cooking, or carrying children. As vulgar and sadistic as the ceremony appears, in some cultures women are considered to have one purpose: to carry and care for children. When I read this novel, I immediately made a connection to The Great Gatsby where Daisy says that she hopes that her daughter will be a fool so that she does not realize what is really going on in the world. Margaret Atwood does a superb job of capturing the realities of lack of women’s rights and what that causes.