Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Escapism
I found the role of escape and escapism to play a valuable role in both the Importance of being Ernest and Alice in wonderland. The idea of it is obvious in both, a little more so in Ernest. Howeve I find they each play a different role. In Alice in Wonderland, although it seems like an escape, she is still plauged by the goings on of the real world through the different encounters she has while in wonderland. Whereas Ernest is only pretending he is escaping, when in reality he is playing through an escape of the mind or Escapism. Although both play mind games Alice is a mental mind game and Ernest is a physical escape.
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This is a great point about the relationship with the reader and the characters in both Carroll's novel and Wilde's play. Alice does use Wonderland as her escape and it is on this journey that she sort of comes to terms with who she is. The world she inhabits, the illogical one, begins to make a little bit more sense when she stops trying to use real world logic and simply plays along. Escapism with Alice works in the way of guiding the reader along with Alice in a world where neither knows exactly what is going on and both rely on a their knowledge of real world scenarios to "escape" the paradoxical Wonderland. Escapism is used slightly differently in Ernest's case, as he invents a completely new personality to escape with by playing of Ernest and Jack as two different people. His idea of escaping seems to work more as avoidance than physically being somewhere else, though location does become relevant within the juxtaposition of his country and city identities.
ReplyDeleteThis is a strong comparison. It's so strange to think that these two texts have such a strong element in common considering how different they are. While Alice escapes her dull, uptight world in regular society to explore a nonsensical land full of bizarre creatures that speak in riddles, Ernest escapes by merely lying and remaining in society. One is escapism and the other is simply a farce.
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