The Importance of Being Earnest-文学赏析.docxVIP

Dramatic irony in many plays arises from conflicting goals between characters. Choose one such example of dramatic irony in The Importance of Being Earnest and explain it.A dramatic irony is the contrast between the characters’ awareness to the situation and the readers’. A common use of a dramatic irony in The Importance of Being Earnest is to build a comic atmosphere. One example of this would be the scene in which Lady Bracknell asks Algernon for cucumber sandwiches. Algernon then blamed Lane for not offering the cucumber sandwiches, who claims that ‘there were no cucumbers in the market this morning’; however, Algernon as well as the audience know that Algernon himself has eaten the sandwiches for Lady Bracknell. The audience may be amused by the fact that Lady Bracknell lacks the knowledge to see through the deception.An essential dramatic irony in The Important of Being Earnest is the double life that Algernon and Jack live in. From the conversation between Algernon and Jack, the audience learns that Algernon has created a fictional character, Bunbury, to help him visit the country, and Jack has done Earnest to help him visit the town. When Lady Bracknell invites Algernon for dinner, Algernon rejects the offer by telling her that he has to visit Bunbury, who is severely ill. Lady Bracknell is surprised by the extreme ‘bad health’ Bunbury is in, but the audience knows that Bunbury does not exist. At this point, when Algernon or Jack needs a reason to leave the town or the country, they will use the names Bunbury and Earnest. An example of a dramatic irony that is caused by the different goals between characters is the misunderstanding of Gwendolen. When Jack proposes to Gwendolen , Gwendolen accepts the proposal because she likes the name ‘Earnest’. Pursuing only the name of Jack’s fictional character, Gwendolen, unlike the audience, does not knows that Jack’s name is not Earnest. Jack, on the other hand, constantly tries to convince Gwendolen that ‘Jack’ is as