The Importance of being Earnest

Like a number of our short stories, The Importance of Being Earnest is overly concerned with the issue of identity. Should we take Wilde's discussion of identity seriously, or does his humor conceal critical ideas regarding how we know who we are?
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I enjoyed reading The Importance of Being Earnest. The wit and sarcasm behind many of the ideas is what kept me interested throughout.

I do not think that Wilde’s humor conceals critical ideas. I think (much like Homer’s Iliad and Milton’s Paradise Lost) that Oscar Wilde expresses very hot-button issues in his work. In the same way that these epic poems had to have relatively concealed messages in order to be permitted, The Importance of Being Earnest was likely written in the way that it was so that it could be published and reasonably shared with his contemporaries.

For example, consider Jack and Algernon and the schemes that they devised for themselves in order to be free from the constraints of society. They both created separate lives for themselves early on in Act I and they maintained this level of dishonesty and added to the web of lies throughout the entire play. To watch this was very entertaining but it also spoke volumes to the theme of identity. These two men were unhappy living as the men they were supposed to be and so they found new ways to re-create themselves and live out their fantasy lives. This is a very introspective analysis on identity, even among modern-day analyses. Although this book is full of humor, the theme of identity often outshines this wit and satire and gives a very in-depth rendering to the concept of identity and reinventing oneself.