Dishonesty relates to humor because when Jack is telling Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism that his brother Ernest has died in Paris, then Cecily comes in to tell Jack that Ernest is in the other room nobody thinks that anything strange is going on and they keep on going like normal. But when Jack first says that his brother has died Miss Prism is says “What a lesson for him! I trust he will profit by it.” Miss Prism thinks that Jacks brother will have learned a lesson from dying but he really won’t because he is “dead” and dead people can’t learn anything. Dishonesty relates to satire of social institutions by making up lies and stereotypical against the lower class people. When Miss Prism is says to Dr. Chasuble and Jack “It is, I regret to say, one of the Rectors most constant duties in this perish. I have often spoken to the poorer classes on the subject. But they don’t seem to know what thrift is.” She is saying that the poor people just keep making babies and not knowing when to stop so they can get more people in their family to work and bring in money for them. It also relates to Ernest being a name by Jack saying that when he goes into town he is going to visit his brother Ernest who doesn’t exist, and when Algernon is at Jacks country house pretending to be Jacks brother Ernest and being down in the county on his way to visit his very sick friend Bunbury. Dishonest is relating to the pursuit of pleasure because Jack is engaged to Gwendolyn as a person named Ernest and Algernon is engaged to Cecily pretending to be Jacks brother named Ernest.
Wilde is saying that dishonesty can lead to bad things. Also he is saying that when you are dishonest with you and others around you it can lead to many complications throughout life. Even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal at the time it will become harder to deal with than you would have originally hoped for.
