Dylan Liguori                                                                                                                       11/20/13

Dr. Ellis                                                                                         EN 101 Understanding Literature

Deception

            William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Or What You Will and The Importance of being Earnest by Oscar Wilde both put an emphasis on the aspects of identity and deception. In William Shakespeare’s play we see Viola dress up as a man (Cesario) to get her life back in order and work for either Olivia or the Duke. In Oscar Wilde’s play we see Earnest who also pretends to be his own brother Jack when he is out of town and Algernon who also pretends to be Earnest’s brother to take the hand of Earnest’s ward Cecily. With all of these lies and deceptive doings many problems arise which, but in the end most of these problems are resolved with the exception of Malvolio who pledges revenge against those who tricked him into thinking Olivia his one true love was in in love with him. Deception is a tricky game to play with, almost like gambling, you roll the dice, if you’re lucky you win, if you lose, then what was the point in lying in the first place at all?

            The first characters to use deception in both of these plays had harmless intentions, only to better themselves, not in a selfish way, but to create an advantage. Viola’s plan as we clearly see goes downhill. When she is sent to woo Olivia for the Duke, because the he sees her as handsome and young even though she is a woman, she goes without question. She impresses Olivia who was thought to be unwilling to see anyone for seven years due to her brother’s death, and Olivia asks Cesario to come back, not mentioning any responses to the Duke’s love for her besides that he should give up. When all of this unravels and Viola’s brother comes into the picture and beats up Sir Toby and Sir Andrew and Cesario is blamed and Cesario is thought to be married to Olivia, Viola is sentenced to be killed. Then Sebastian finds Antonio and his sister, and the foggy air is finally cleared. In regards to Wilde’s play, both Algernon and Earnest find themselves in the predicament of being engaged to women, who don’t know their true names. This leads to misgivings, and everything almost falls apart until Jack finds out his real name is Earnest and that his mother is Lady Bracknell’s son. Many events unfolded and could have ended up for the worst, but the lucky roll of the dice proved useful in both of these play’s conclusions.

            I never was a good writer in high school, whether or not it was from focusing more on math and other subjects that interested me, or maybe I didn’t have the skill of writing. Either way, I have found out that when something in literature interests me, I can almost always type up a coherent and flowing essay. When it is a piece of work that maybe doesn’t appeal to me because of my lack of knowledge on the subject or it just bores me then I can’t seem to write my best work. With this observation I have come up with a hypothesis to mitigate this problem to a level that will remain tangible throughout the rest of my college career. If not amusing to me I will try to interpret the story or poem in a peculiar not normal way to my liking. This is very risky because my thoughts may differ tremendously from the meaning at hand but I predict it will be a useful tool for me in future writings. Among the vast amount of new techniques and different ways of analyzing poems, short stories and poems, the most interesting thing I gained in writing the six blogs was how to improve my writing skills.