The Importance of Being Earnest

    In the play, The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, the characters travel between the city and the country. Jack and Algernon travel between these two places and bunbury. Moving from these locations and pretending to be different people allowed the main characters to create a humorous and satirical representation of the Victorian Society.
    Throughout the play, Jack and Algernon participate in what Algernon calls bunburying. Bunburying is pretty much the act of leaving one place for a false reason and arriving at a new place with a different name. For example, Jack often leaves the country to visit his ill brother Earnest who lives in the city. However, when he arrives in the city he goes by the name Earnest instead of Jack. Jack does not actually have a brother named Earnest and he lies to everyone in the city when he claims that his name is Earnest. Jack and Algy use this tactic in order to be dismissed from social gatherings and things of that sort. It allows them to go against the manners one is supposed to have in the Victorian society. These characters are able to do whatever they want and not worry about how it will affect their true selves. By having his characters bunbury, Wilde was able to poke fun at the expected manners and ways of living during this time period.
    Through Algernon and Jacks conversations, Oscar Wilde is able to do this as well. When the two characters speak of pointless matters, Algernon often questions why it is wrong and why it is right to do certain things in society. This happens more than once in the play, while the characters are both in the city and in the country. Jack and Algy will start off having a serious conversation until one of them questions why they must do certain things and what importance it has on their lives. These meaningless conversations and how they may act because of them, however, do not harm their reputations because of Jack and Algernons constant bunburying. These scenes help develop the humor of the play by questioning why people were supposed to do or not do certain things during the time period.
    The main characters, Jack and Algernon, in The Importance of Being Earnest provide a humorous and satirical side of the Victorian society through their conversations and their traveling. By questioning the time periods expectations and pretending to be other people, they give comic relief to a serious and proper period of time.

Poem Analysis

  The poem, "Dream of Fair Women", by Ann Hayes is very simple, but shows the misconceptions fantasy can give a woman. The author uses the structure of the poem and allusions to show this theme and the harmonious tone of the poem. This poem was constructed using four tercets. The rhyme scheme is aaa-bbb-ccc-ddd. The structure of the poem causes it to transition well and makes it easy to read. Each tercet has a different subject, but they all help develop the theme which is the difference between fantasy and reality. The simple rhyming structure also helps identify a calm, peaceful tone. Another literary device used in the poem is allusion. The first tercet alludes to the story of Adam and Eve, "The lady gave her trust, an apple fell." The second stanza refers to the Virgin Mary, "Upon a maiden mother, one alone." The third stanza involved the two subjects of the previous stanzas and how they believed in life after death and the goodness of men, "O dream of men Believing life is good or might have been and that we may live again!" In these first three stanzas, the author is commenting on the stereotypes of women. However in the last stanza, the author alludes to the princess Sleeping Beauty who, as the story goes, is sleeping until her true love comes to wake her. In the poem the author has "sleeping beauty" awake from this fantasy and go into the real world were she can take care of herself and make her own path. I found this poem interesting because when I was growing up I never went to church or really got involved with religious stories, like Adam and Eve. However I did grow up watching all the princess movies and films similar to it. They both have stereotypes of women though, for example that women should stay at home and depend on a man to support them. So although I am familiar with one more than the other, stories from the bible and princess fairy tales have some similarities.

  The poem "Siren Song", by Margaret Atwood caught my attention because she is also the author of "The Maidens Tale." The poem is about one of the sirens and their song. A siren, in Greek mythology, is a bird with a woman's head that lures sailors to their death. Throughout the poem Atwood alludes to the fact that the speaker is in fact one of the sirens. The sixth stanza gives the major clue, "with these two feathery maniacs, I don't enjoy singing this trio, fatal and valuable." The humorous and deceptive tone helps identify the speakers intentions. At the end of the poem, it is revealed that the whole poem was actually the sirens song. The author also uses enjambment to imitate the persuasive and soothing effect of the sirens song. Because the sentences begin and start in the middle of the line, it causes the read to continue to read without pauses, kind of like the song is pulling you in and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Not only was I interested in this poem because it was by Margaret Atwood, I also liked it because of the humor and the cleverness of the poem.