Dishonesty!

Dishonesty is all over life; mainly because of others feelings. In the Importance of Being Ernest you see dishonesty in many different ways; people lie about their names, their family, they tell white lies and generally just lie. Dishonesty is often found in humor as it is fun to watch others lies coming undone and even more fun to watch them try to cover up their lies, In the Importance of Being Ernest you find humorous lies when Jack says that Ernest is dead and then a few minutes later realizes that Ernest is actually in his house. Also the thought of bunburying which is itself very humorous is dishonest. The fact that Cecily and Gwendolen like the Ernests' because of their name is humorous because those are not actually their names; an epigram: karma. Dishonesty is related to satire because the name of the main character is Ernest. Ernest is not earnest -which refers to honesty, sincerity, and seriousness - when he is Ernest and is in fact that opposite: dishonest, unserious.  Also there is satire on the fact that the bachelors, who do no work in London, are well-dressed while the ones who work are under dressed. Dishonesty is also found in the pursuit of pleasure. To get out of their boring, and rather dull lives Jack and Algernon make up aliases so that they can go somewhere else and be a partier. White lies also go into the category of dishonesty for pleasure because telling a white lie can make friends: for instance "I would hang on Miss Prisms every word." (chasuble), when really he would probably be just as bored as Cecily.

I think that using dishonesty and traits of Earnestness, Wilde, is trying to portray that lies and dishonesty can be good and bad. Theirs the bad in that you're obviously lying, that you're distancing yourself from your family and friends (keeping secrets), and that you might get a bad reputation. The good is that you save peoples feelings, for example instead of Algernon telling Lady Bracknell that he didn't want eat dinner at her house he said that he was going to visit his sick cousin Bunbury; you also can keep situations under controls using lies or manipulate others. In society lying and dishonesty has a very negative connotation but as Wilde shows dishonesty is very needed. If anyone has seen the movie, The Invention of Lying, I think that they should further grasp why we need the ability to lie and why lying can be a good thing as well as a bad thing.