Two Faced Society

Two-Faces in Society
We live in a two-faced society. Almost nothing is exactly what it seems. There is always
a hidden motive. As Cecily asked Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, I hope you
have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That
would be hypocrisy. Unfortunately, in the nature of a satire, this statement is flipped from
reality. Really, most people are hiding the bad behind a mask of good. They choose what they
want the world to see and cover what they want to hide. In each era, this truth is present, though
it comes in various shades and disguises. The three books that will be referenced to here The
Crucible by Arthur Miller, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Importance of
Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde all show the kinds of lies people put on to sustain a false selfimage.
The Crucible is all about lies. It begins, consists of, and ends with lies. Almost every
character is two-faced in some way, and is hiding some part of his- or her- self. John Proctor
tells his wife that he is over with Abigail and is now devoted to her, Elizabeth Proctor. Abigail is
the worst liar of the tale. She knows what has happened, she knows the truth, but she lies to
everyone to save face. The blame is laid on others, anyone Abigail has even the slightest grudge
against, and she puts on the face of the innocent girl who is being hurt by the evil doings of the
witch girls. But when she is alone with those she is accusing, her true feelings are seen. The
horrible, spiteful, anger-filled personality is evident. The Crucible shows how people use lies
and false images to get what they want. Abigail has no qualms about lying and using others to
gain power.
In The Great Gatsby, nearly every character has a mask of some sort. Wilson, Myrtles
husband, is really the only one who is himself. All of the other characters are hiding one thing or
another. Jay Gatsby, the title character of the book, hides his lust for Daisy Buchanan behind his
money and his power. The massive parties that he throws are merely a cover for him so he can
watch Daisy. He has built up an image of wealth, fame, and power, and most are deceived by it.
But what of the uncut pages in the books he keeps in his library? This is a clue left by the author
showing that everything is a front. Gatsby hides his true self so much, he warps his reality and
starts to believe his own lies. This is apparent when he tells Nick, Cant repeat the past?... Why
of course you can! He thought himself to have enough power to do anything, change anything,
be anything. Even Nick, the narrator of the book, who is supposedly the temperate, even-minded
one, hides behind masks of his own. He is hiding in the luxury of the big city though his roots
are in the west. Tom Buchanan is all about Daisy on one side and then fawning over Myrtle on
the other. This book displays how societal status is used to hide the truth about a person and that
persons actions, feelings, and true personality. Fitzgeralds purpose in writing the story was to
show the truth of the 1920s American society. The society as a whole was two-faced.
Everything looked glamorous and great on the outside, but dig down a bit, and you see the filth
and the crime and the horror that pervaded the era. The Golden Age was but a gilded piece of
rotting wood.
In The Importance of Being Earnest, the two sides of people arent even hidden. In the
nature of the satire, they are exaggerated, but not so much as to be untruthful. That is what
happens, that is what people do so that they can fit in in society. This story shows how people
have to change and alter their personality and hide things from others constantly to maintain the
proper image. An obvious example from the play is the Jack/Ernest deal. The man in question
is Earnest in town and Jack in the country. He has two completely different figures that he has
built up, and neither is his true self. Each person he plays is half who is really is, and half who
he needs to be to fit in and get what he wants out of the situation. At first glance, Jack/Ernest is
not a bad person, he is not meant to be the villain, but even his simple actions and roles are for
the purpose of deceiving someone to get something. Every major character at some point in the
play can be seen switching their opinion, switching their mask, and putting on a different face to
try to gain the upper hand in their current situation. Lying is just a part of their lives, its what
they do, its what theyre expected to do. This satiric play seems to take this to an extreme, but
does it really? Is anything presented here something that wouldnt happen in real life?
Society is two-faced. It always has been and always will be. Each of these literary works
shows this major flaw in society, each in a different time period: 1692 in The Crucible, the 1920s
in The Great Gatsby, and the Victorian Era in The Importance of Being Earnest. Society hasnt
changed, the flaws havent changed. Only they ways they are presented have changed. Society
stresses the importance of being earnest, but we are only earnest in our selfishness. We live
for ourselves, we act for ourselves. We are losing who we really are because we are hiding our
true selves so much of the time. Society is two-faced, and so are we.

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