2016 AP​ ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION FREE-RESPONSE 

®​

QUESTIONS 
Question 3

(Suggested time-40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)

Many works of literature contain a character who intentionally deceives others. The character’s
dishonesty may be intended either to help or to hurt. Such a character, for example, may choose to
mislead others for personal safety, to spare someone’s feelings, or to carry out a crime.

Choose a novel or play in which a character deceives others. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the
motives for that character’s deception and discuss how the deception contributes to the meaning of the
work as a whole.

The saddest truth of the human condition is that as a person or persons become more

successful, they tend to grow more lazy and malevolent, seeking only to maintain their

success and nothing more. This principle can be applied to a single person, an entire class

of people, or even the whole of a society and still hold true in many cases. In his play ​The

Importance of Being Earnest,​ Oscar Wilde uses his titular character Jack Worthing’s

deception of a double life to illustrate this very triality, as Jack deceives to aid his selfish

desires which were created and purported by a class structure in a depraved society driven

to slothful malevolence by success and its accompanying paranoia.

Examined at the closest level, Jack deceives his companions solely so that he may

fulfill his own personal desires, but upon closer examination he is enabled and even

encouraged by his class and societal structure. Jack’s largest deception in the work is that of

a double life, as he pretends to be a man named Earnest in the city that he may fulfill

desires, and a man named Jack in the country that he may fulfill obligations. The most

offensive of these two persona’s is obviously the one which fulfills his desires; it seems

(rightfully so) as though Jack lies that he may reject his personal responsibility and instead

seek only his own pleasure. However, the presence of these fabrications in the first place
demonstrates a deep and dangerous flaw in the society itself which Wilde seeks to

highlight; if Jack’s own personal duties are so abhorrent and overwhelming that he must

create an entirely new life to fulfill his own desires, perhaps deception is the only desirable

option. This does not explain, however, why Jack would need a separate person to live in

the city, where he goes by Ernest, if he desires a mere escape from personal responsibility.

The suggestion given over the course of the play is that the society which forces a double

life upon an individual through restrictive rules is the same society which will not approve

of their usage due to those rules. Thus, it is obvious that these rules are not utilized for the

benefit of those in the society, but out of a primal human fear of the loss of success.

Arbitrary and unhelpful rules are created to give each individual and the society as a whole

a false sense of security in their straw fortress which could be blown away at the first

inclination the rules do not uphold the lifestyle.

The most powerful arm by which the malevolent society controls the lives of its

inhabitants is the class system, and this is especially the case for Mr. Worthing's deception

as it forces both slothfulness and great responsibility upon the wealthy, demanding that they

support both and yet neither. Jack’s close friend, also a member of the Victorian upper

class, is an amazing example of this; though his primary societal role is to maintain his

wealth and status, he must create a fabricated friend named Bunbury who allows him to

escape social responsibilities even though the escape of social responsibility is exactly what

society says his wealth should provide. The pursuit of both wealth and status cannot

coexist, as one describes the arrival at success while another describes its perpetuation; the

societal norm to which Jack as exposed (most plainly Algernon) suggests that he should

cease contributing effort in his wealth, and yet also says that he ​must​ contribute effort to
keep with his status. This is yet again a byproduct of the ridiculous rules which a successful

society creates to support and explain its slothful success; Wilde realized the full extent of

these rules' facade and their destructive effects, and is merely offering an exaggeration of

them through Jack’s need for deception. Many characters in the book do manage both of

these competing agendas, but it is much to their own detriment; Lady Bracknell spends her

time holding dinner parties with Algernon and conversing with others in her class, and yet

she also spends all too much time deciding the fitness of Jack as a husband for her niece

based solely on his ability to abide by societal rules. Jack will never be able to both abide

by societal rules and fulfill his own wishes to the extent that he does, and thus he can never

win in the scope of his class or in the grand scheme of his society. Though there is a bit of

depravity in his selfishness, there is greater depravity in the whole of society for purporting

its own slothfulness through meaningless rules to the detriment of its inhabitants.

Through Jack’s need for deception, Oscar Wilde conveys that it is the society itself

which is at fault, as it has created a success for its top class that suggests they have arrived

and yet pushes them the other direction towards effort through the importance of

meaningless rules.