Dishonesty in The Importance of Being Earnest

     Dishonesty makes up a lot of the humor in the play "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde. Particularly the misunderstandings of who should be married to whom. Gwendolen and Cecily both think that they are going to be married to Earnest, but in reality Earnest is an entirely made up figure from a result of what Algernon calls bunburying. Epigrams are also a type of humor that is put into the play. For example, "Cecily: It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable" (pg. 52). This is usually not true for most people because you would have gotten to know someone better if you were to spend a longer amount of time with them and therefore hate to see them go. Someone you have just met though, you would most likely not care as much. Satire of social institutions also contain dishonesty. Engagement between Gwendolen and Jack or Algernon and Cecily was not at all honest because of the confusion that the woman both thought that they would be married to a man named Earnest, when they were not. Education was made fun of when Cecily says: "Dr. Chasuble is a most learned man. He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows." (pg. 56). Jack and Algernon are both very dishonest when they pretend to be Earnest  and decide to marry Gwendolen and Cecily with that lie. Therefore they were both not being very earnest by pretending to be Earnest. The pursuit of pleasure is Algernon and Jack trying to have pleasure by being dishonest. For example, Jack goes to town and pretends to be Earnest as a form of pleasure, and gets engaged to Gwendolen while he is at it. Algernon enjoys bunburying in the country and gets engaged to Cecily. These are both forms of pleasure that the two men take with dishonesty.
     I think that Wilde is trying to say that even though being dishonest is a action to be looked down upon, there can also be conclutions that end up better with the factor of dishonesty. At the end of this play three couples end up engaged and Jack finds out a lot more about his family because they were being dishonest. I also think that Wilde was trying to be lighthearted about this subject. Shown with him writing a comedy. The characters in this play also do not seem to have taken the excessive bunburying too seriously and it all ends up that everyone lives "happily ever after".