ap lang oscar wilde essay

• AP English Language and Composition Exam Sample Essay Questions

April 9, 2024

After an hour of answering multiple-choice questions , you’ll have two hours to write three essays : 

• A synthesis essay in which you use sources to argue your point of view on a given issue. 
• An analytical essay that examines, interprets, and explains the meaning and structure of prose passage. 
• An argumentative essay that supports, refutes, or qualifies an opinion expressed in a statement or brief passage. 

Before you’re given the signal to begin writing your essays, you’ll have 15 minutes to read the questions and the sources for the synthesis essay. However, you don’t have to spend the whole time reading. During those 15 minutes you can plan your essay, underline noteworthy ideas, formulate a tentative thesis, or prepare a brief outline. You might even glance at the other essay questions. Essentially, the time is yours to fill as you wish but with one exception: you may not start writing your essay. That begins only after the proctor gives you the green light. 

Write the essays in any order. The choice is yours. The suggested writing time for each essay is 40 minutes.

Sample Essay Questions

The following sample essay questions have been taken from previous AP English Language and Composition exams.

2014 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• In recent years college graduates in great numbers have failed to find jobs for which their education has prepared them. As a result, many people, including high school students and their parents, question whether a college degree is worth the expense required to attain one. Others, however, argue that a college education is not meant solely to prepare students for a job or career. After reading six sources related to this issue, write an essay that discusses whether a college education is worth the cost. Synthesize information from at least three of the sources into your essay. 
• In 1780, Abigail Adams wrote a letter of advice to her son John Quincy Adams, then traveling in Europe with his father, John Adams, the future second president of the United States. Read the letter carefully. Then, write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical strategies that Mrs. Adams uses to advise the young man. 
• Research by experts in education reveals that the creativity of children from kindergarten through sixth grade has suffered in recent years. A decline in creativity is alarming, especially when present and future world problems related to climate, economics, war and peace, and much more will require increasingly creative solutions. One proposal to reverse the decline in creativity is to actively teach creative thinking in school. Opinion is divided on whether this approach is worthwhile. State your view on this issue by writing to your school board. Explain what you mean by creativity and argue for or against starting a course in creativity.

2015 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• Many schools, colleges, and universities have instituted honor codes meant to discourage such practices as cheating, stealing, and plagiarizing. Students violating established codes are subject to a variety of punishments. After reading six sources related to the issue of honor codes, compose an essay that supports your position on whether your school should establish, maintain, revise, or eliminate an honor code or honor system. Your argument should incorporate ideas, quotations, paraphrases, or summaries found in at least three of the six sources that accompany this question. 
• To commemorate the tenth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, labor union organizer and civil rights leader Cesar Chavez wrote an article that discusses nonviolent resistance as a means to achieve certain social goals. After reading Chavez’s words, write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices he uses to develop his argument. 
• Friendly phrases such as “How’s it going?” and “Nice to meet you” are known as polite speech and are usually not taken literally. In an essay, develop your position on the value or function of polite speech in a culture or community with which you are familiar. To support your argument, use evidence drawn from your reading, experience, or observation.

2016 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• With the spread of globalization in recent decades, English has become the primary language for communicating in international finance, science, and politics. As the use of English has spread, foreign language learning in English-speaking countries has declined, making the use of only one language—English—the norm. Carefully read the six sources accompanying this question and then write an essay that takes a position on the claim that people who speak only English and no other language are at a disadvantage in today’s world. In your discussion, synthesize appropriate quotations, ideas, paraphrases, or summaries found in at least three of the sources. 
• In 2004, upon the death of former president Ronald Reagan, the ex–prime minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher, who had worked closely with Reagan, delivered a eulogy to the American people honoring her former colleague and friend. Read the eulogy carefully, and then write an essay that analyzes the rhetoric Thatcher used to convey her thoughts and feelings. 
• Back in the nineteenth century, the Irish author Oscar Wilde noted that “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” In an essay, argue your position on Wilde’s claim that disobedience and rebellion promote progress. Support your views with evidence drawn from your reading, studies, experience, or observation.

2017 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• The growth of the Internet has, among other things, changed what and how people read and in so doing has generated controversy about the need for and future of traditional public libraries. Some observers question the relevance of today’s libraries, while others see opportunities for libraries to grow and thrive in new ways. After reading six sources related to the future of libraries, write an essay that discusses your position on the future role, if any, of public libraries. As you develop your argument, be sure to incorporate, or synthesize, material from at least three of the sources that accompany this assignment. Whether you quote directly from a source or put its ideas into your own words, clearly identify each source you use either in the text of your essay or in a footnote. 
• At the beginning of a speech to the Women’s National Press Club in 1960, the American journalist and politician Clare Booth Luce expressed her objections to a tendency of the press corps to give readers sensationalist stories rather than maintain journalistic integrity by writing serious, consequential news stories. After carefully reading her opening remarks, write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical strategies Luce used to prepare the audience for the disapproval that was central to the remainder of her speech. 
• In Empire of Illusion, the author Chris Hedges, referring to the world of politics and the consumer culture, argues that “the most essential skill . . . is artifice.” That is, as Hedges explains, successful politicians “no longer need to be competent, sincere, or honest. They need only to appear to have these qualities.” In other words, deception succeeds. After reading a short passage that develops Hedges’s views, write an essay stating your opinion on the issue. Use appropriate, specific evidence to develop and illustrate your position.

2018 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• The power of a government to confiscate people’s private property for public use is known as eminent domain. Although eminent domain is centuries old, it remains a contentious issue throughout the world. Read the six sources on the following pages. Then, using at least three of the sources, write a coherent essay that supports, opposes, or qualifies the principle that the govern- mental right of eminent domain is useful and productive. When quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing material, be sure to identify each source in parentheses either with its letter (A, B, C, etc.) or with a description. 
• In 1997, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright delivered the commencement address at Mount Holyoke College, a women’s college in Massachusetts. After reading a given excerpt from the speech, write a well-developed essay that identifies and analyzes the rhetorical choices Albright made to help convey her message to the audience. 
• In her book Gift from the Sea, the author and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906– 2001) reflects on how people make choices: “We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.” After carefully considering Lindbergh’s position on choosing the unknown, write an essay that develops your own view on the value of exploring the unknown. Support your position with appropriate and specific evidence.

2019 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• Our society’s increasing demand for energy has drawn attention of governments and consumers to large-scale wind power and away from traditional materials, such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Yet, the creation of large commercial wind farms has created controversy for a variety of reasons. Carefully read the following six sources, including the introduction to each one, and then write an essay that develops your position on the most important factors that an individual or agency should take into account when determining whether to establish a wind farm. As you develop your position, synthesize material from at least three of the sources. 
• In 1930 Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi led a nonviolent march in India protesting Britain’s colonial monopoly on the taxation of salt. The Salt March, as it was called, triggered a civil disobedience movement that won India independence from Britain in 1947. Just prior to the march Gandhi had written to Viceroy Lord Irwin, who represented the British crown in India. The passage that follows is the conclusion of that letter. Read it carefully and then write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Gandhi made to present his case to Lord Irwin.
• The term “overrated” is commonly used to diminish concepts, geographic places, roles, books, movies, etc., that the speaker thinks fail to live up to their reputation. Choose something that in your judgment is overrated and then write a well-developed essay explaining your views. Use appropriate evidence from your reading, experience, or observation to support your argument.

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Friday, march 3, 2017, 26 comments:.

Rosa Parks, Saint Maximilian, and Matin Luther were are rebels of their times, and they stood up for what they believed in and made huge impacts in other's lives. As Wilde explained, disobedience is not necessarily a bad trait to have, but it is the reasoning behind the disobedience that creates progress. Rosa Parks stood up for herself, the other of the African Americans in her time, and those in the future. She was disobedient to the authorities not because she was the one doing wrong, but because the authorities were the ones who were wrong. Parks wanted to make a statement that all humans deserve equal rights no matter the color of their skin. Even though she was arrested for her disobedience to sit in the "colored" section of the bus, she made a statement to not only the people in her time, but people are still talking about her courage to this day. As Wilde explained, "It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion." Parks helped change the laws about blacks and whites, and made it so that all humans are equal. Without her rebellion and disobedience, whose to say that our laws might not have changed? Disobedience is the crucial element for change. Saint Maximilian lived during World War II and was a victim of Auschwitz. When WWII hit his home town, he became one of the only brothers in his monastery. He then ended up opening up the monastery to help shelter refugees including 2,000 Jews. The monastery was then shut down and him and the refugees were sent to Auschwitz. He died in the concentration camp because he volunteered to die in place of a father who still had his family. To this day Saint Maximilian touches people's lives and helps people find their way to Christ because of is disobedience of his refugee shelter and martyrdom. Martin Luther is known for his 95 theses. During his time on earth, the Catholic church was selling indulgences to pay for the Cathedral in Rome. Luther was outraged at this and wrote his 95 theses telling the church what they were doing wrong. This rebellion lead to the banishing and reformation of the indulgences in the church. No longer were they being sold or just given out for the benefit of the church. Without Luther's rebellion, the church would not be the way it is today. Wilde made some very bold and truthful statements about disobedience. Many of the most remembered significant people in history were in fact rebels and did not follow the rules. Disobedience and rebellion are most definitely crucial elements for progress and change.

I really enjoyed how you used Rosa Parks, Saint Maximilian, and Martin Luther as examples of the three "rebels". I think that added a good kick to your blog! Good work!

Marcy, I enjoyed your references because they really added some opening detail! You also covered disobedience well in your bodies!

Marcy, including the three important figures of our time added how important disobedience is at times. It was good to use them as they used it for the right reasons . Good blog!

Disobedience is seen throughout today's society, and many people have different outlooks depicting wether or not it is a negative of positive behavior. In many cases people believe that disobedience is a bad thing, but I on the other hand think it's a good thing. Though it may seem strange, I personally think that through disobedience, a person can learn many valuable life lessons, including, the difference between right and wrong. Several kids, teenagers, and young adults have trouble telling whether or not something is right or wrong. In many cases, people think that what their doing is somehow benefiting someone or something, but in reality, is not. By doing the wrong thing in some situations can make an individual mentally strong and can potentially lead them to make the right decision in the future. I know from many personal experiences that choosing to do the wrong thing can make me smarter and more prepared for what life will someday throw at me. Through disobeying, or physically choosing to do the wrong thing, an individual will have the capability to learn from their own decisions. For example, when a student constantly disobeys a teacher by not listening, refusing to do homework, or just refusing to accept criticism it can lead to future life lessons. This same student may fail out of school or get kicked out of their future job all because they disobeyed. Now of course, this isn't a good thing, but this student can learn from the mistakes of disobeying by being led to a failure. This failure can teach and remind the student that disobeying can lead to bigger problems. Once somebody fails so many times, it is only right for that person to become mentally and physically stronger to do that right thing next. One should never strive to be disobedient, but to rather take a step back and rethink the situation they are currently in. I am not saying that it's okay to be disobedient, but disobedience could potentially lead a trouble individual to success in the future. I know many people out there would have to disagree with what I am saying, but I honestly think that disobedience can improve how one may decide to act in the near future, and what their entire outlook on life is. Everyone is going to disobey at least once on their lives, you just have to learn to teach yourself how to learn from your mistakes that you make. Although people are going to be made at you for disobeying for whatever reason you choose, but you have to fix the problem, and learn to begin to not disobey anymore. Nobody can be perfect one hundred percent of them time. Mistakes happen wether they are intentional or not. We must use our wrongdoings and always learn from them. If we do not learn from them, then there really is no reason to do them in the first place. We have to learn to do everything in life with a purpose, if you do not then you are simply just going to the motions of life and not living it to its full potential.

Cass, you provided some nice details that really expanded your essay. I really liked the points you hit!

I really enjoyed the approach you took for this blog! I especially liked how you added your own personal opinions and experiences! Try to expand your vocabulary and use more descriptive or creative words to help spice up your writings. Overall, great job!

Disobedience is acknowledged as an act of failure or refusal to obey rules or someone in authority. Disobedience attempts to create influence on society's point of view. Oscar Wilde took the time to share his opinion relating to the source of progress found in the actions of disobeying. Failure in life may not always appear as a wanted theme, but failure and disobedience open up a portal toward achieving success and gaining opportunities. Robert F. Kennedy once expressed, "only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly". It's often heard they you learn from your mistakes. Which I believe is somewhat of the point Wilde is trying to share with us. No one is perfect and everyone follows a journey. On that path of life encounters with obstacles are bound to be made, and it's up to an individual to choose their road. Through wrong doings success can be made. With mistakes and risks there is knowledge and learning to be met. A common phrase often used around in life is "everything happens for a reason". The road ahead is never revealed to people and their personal lives. Failing at duties can create benefits in growing stronger as it teaches life lessons. Being apart of wrong doings brings upon unforeseen opportunities that would have not been available without the negative act. Failing in life it's just the beginning of opportunity in gaining success. it is nearly impossible to be perfect at everything in life. There will be obstacles to overpass. Feeling pain of regret from opportunity is much worse than the feelings of failure. It is important to put each and every little attempt toward reaching goals even if that involves opening up big risks. Taking chances and risks in life provide the best chances in success.

You made this blog your own and explained it very well. You used an example I would've never thought of. It made me see things differently!

I liked the quote that you choose by Robert F. Kennedy. That was a good addition to your blog. Good job!

Part 1 It is dated back to the 1700s where America's most prominent forefather, Benjamin Franklin, spoke that "Honesty is the best policy," while Oscar Wilde followed up in 1891 stating "Disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion." Through the centuries, many individuals have voiced their opinion on the idea of honesty and disobedience and the benefits/ misfortunes that follow with such actions. It is through the life's curveballs that we experience our conscience debating between honesty or disobedience in our own lives. Society in the twenty first century can be viewed as an all time low or all time high, depending on the circumstance. In once recent occurrence, disobedience happens to create high national and federal controversy while extending information to the average Americans of what their country is partaking in and watching. Edward Snowden worked for the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) and was a prominent computer technology professional. He made his way to the top of the line professionals and through that time, he came across classified information that the government used "numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance, with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments" to have the capability to view everyone in the world! I personally saw this movie in theaters and was intrigued until the last scene of the real life story of Snowden and his actions. In his opinion, he thought what the governments across the world were doing were morally wrong and unstable for officials to be using this as a negative motive against citizens and their classified lives. In 2013, Snowden released the information from his hotel room with the help from two news casting officials who were in the same mindset as himself. His disobedience to the privacy of the CIA reached breaking news across the entire world and informed the American viewers, specifically, of what governments and even their own is doing. His rebellion created an epidemic of awareness for average Americans to be weary of their household technology (computer and cell phone) being used as a spying device. As a personal note, I can remember my mom telling my sister, who was still in college at the time, to be mindful of her technology (mostly the camera on her laptop) due to hackers having the capability to use her system and view the life in front of the lens. Who knew the government(s) were the main prospects

I have found myself agreeing with Oscar Wilde. Disobedience and rebellion has truly been a way of finding progress with certain things. A better way to think of it is that when we find people arguing against another for the greater good, people might side with them and form a rebellion until their needs have been met. Strikes are the first rebellions that come to my mind, and more than enough strikes have happened to force this world into being a better place. There were many labor strikes such as "Pullman On Strike", "Postal Workers Strike", and the "ILGWU Strike." These particular strikes were all asking for more pay and all wanted to negotiate their work hours. Some wanted less hours and more pay, others wanted more hours and more pay. The "Pullman On Strike" happened on May 11, 1894 and ended just two months later. They wanted less hours in a day, but still get the same amount of pay for the day. They never got their needs, but who is to say that it didn't spark strikes all over America to have the same things done. Another labor strike, "Postal Workers Strike", happened in March of 1970. The postal workers were told that they did not have the right to collective bargaining. Nearly 200,000 workers went on strike, and later received the right and have had it until this day. Now if that wasn't progress in that field, what was it? The last example of the labor strikes is the "ILGWU Strike", or as its full name is "The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Strike". This strike was done by woman who wanted a 52 hour week, but also wanted a 20% pay increase. The word of the strike was spreading, the strike soon consisted of about 30,000 woman from 500 companies across America. It wasn't long before these women got what they wanted and received their higher pay and work hours. These labor strikes are barely scratching the surface on the total strikes set out for better rights, pay, freedom, etc. Strikes are a huge example of how going against rules for a better cause can create a better society. A society that we need.

Your blog was very informational, however it shows grammatical errors and possible different word usage could make the essence of the blog more impactful. Overall, the example showed your argument!

I thought your use of the many different strikes was interesting and a nice approach. Expanding on some of your ideas would have been a nice touch to your blog. Otherwise, interesting And a great blog!

Jake, I like your use of statistics to formulate your point, but in the future it can be tremendously more effective if you also paste the URL to where you derived your findings from, at the end of your blog. Keep up the good work!

Part 2 As children, we are taught Ben Franklin's "honesty is the best policy" and preached the importance of telling the truth. But later on in our lives we're told the little white lies never hurt anyone and are now led to disobedience leading to success in the end (occasionally). Throughout our lives, we can evaluate how relevant that actually is. For example, I am usually the one to always follow the rules and refrain from being put in situations that I tell one person one thing, but actually do another. It was just last week where I should have used the disobedience policy rather than the honesty. A friend and myself were in 8th period together right after the "Pittsburgh Steelers" assembly and found ourselves wanting to get a picture with them since we were not able to get one while we were still present in the auditorium. We contemplated going back, whether the teacher would allow us was a pressing obstacle. I no sooner asked the teacher and she gave a straight up no (quite rudely if I might add). But I asked if my friend and I could go to the auditorium, not if her and I could go to the library or see Mrs. A. It is more likely that she would have allowed us to that proposition rather than telling the truth. We could have said we were going to one place and snuck into the auditorium and get a picture with them. But now, we missed that chance and will more than likely never get a picture with them let alone see them again. We missed the opportunity by being honest and following the rules rather than Snowden and achieving greatness through adversity. The double standard can be applied to the honesty vs disobedience instance, however, you have to judge the circumstance as to if it's worth it or not. In both cases, it would have been worth it to be disobedient just this once. The in between "truth and lies" has to be evaluated in certain doses. It does not apply to everything, but the instance with Snowden and the picture support the act of being disobedient and rebellious.

Emily, I like how you worked with two examples throughout your blog. However one can be both honest and rebellious. Was Snowden not honest with his findings while also disobedient to the NSA? Anyway, good job!

I agree with Oscar Wilde's claim that disobedience is a valuable trait that can promote social progress, but I disagree on the idea that it is man's original virtue. Disobedience and rebellions to injustice for good-ends can be found easily throughout history. There's the American Revolution where the colonies rebelled against Great Britain due to their unfair practices of high taxes, the fight for Civil rights, and the freeing of the slaves. But these great rebellions do not make disobedience strictly a thing to shine upon. Wilde's claims are valid insofar that the disobedience is pursued only for the betterment of humanity. Disobedience can cause more destruction than good. In the beginning of creation, Man was disobedient to God and created original sin for the rest of mankind to endure. What social progress was made in such an act? In 1914, Gavrilo Princip killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Gavrilo was a rebel trying to overthrow the Siberian government due to the idea that the Siberian government was oppressive. However very few would think the act was admirable, because it was one of the acts that sparked WW1. A more recent rebellion, which is not virtuous in any sense, would be ISIS. They want to overthrow all governments and install a worldwide Islamic Caliphate. They are disobedient to rules other than their own, and the only thing that is coming out of this is social destruction, not progress. Ancient buildings are being destroyed, innocents are being crucified for their beliefs, and a fear of terrorism is present.

I agree, but want more examples! Good job!

Your position on this topic was interesting to consider and enjoyable to read. It's a completely different side to what Wilde claims. However, once again, I wish you would adds some more ideas to your writing. It's lacking the extra bit to make the blog even more interesting to read. You have great ideas and I wish you would show more of them.

I have always had an immense respect for those figures in history who were never afraid to speak their mind and ideas in any type of situation. I think Oscar Wilde's Quijote speaks a great deal towards those fearless rebels that marked human history forever. Of course there was a specific time, place, and situation for when disobedience is necessary. Without those special fearless people in our world, where would humanity be today? One of the first instances of disobedience and rebellion that occurred for the greater good that comes to my mind is the American Revolution. The thirteen colonies were put under strict and cruel ruling from the English king. The citizens of the colonies were becoming more and more fed up with the unfair treatment they were being subjected to. The fearless rebels they had in their midst who were not afraid of disobedience to lead a rebellion against the unfair king. The revolution went on and changed the entire world's outlook on life. Without these rebels, where would our world be today? Another example I can think of (bare with me here) to elite to this quote, is or new president Donald Trump, even if he isn't the most conventional rebel Oscar Wilde refers to. I personally believe Donald Trump wants to do good for this country and wants to help the United States grow and prosper. Because of his lack of a filter when he speaks, many people are turned off and do not want to listen to him. He speaks his mind and says ideas other people are to afraid to say, which many people are not used to hearing. Donald Trump knew what he wanted when he decided to run for president: to make it to the White House. He knew what he wanted and used his unconventional form of disobedience and his rebellious attitude to stand out from his competition. The people who voted for him most likely recognized that about him and were attracted to that aspect of him. Clearly, in Donald Trump's case, disobedience helped him each his goal and create progress for this country. At one point or another, disobedience comes out of every person for various reasons. Looking back in history, we see the people who utilized disobedience and rebellion to their advantage to stand up for others and their values. It's interesting to think about the time period Oscar Wilde wrote his idea on disobedience and rebellion. What would he think if he could see what was to come in the future of the world?

I found it very affective that you opened with a question and then answered that question in your blog. it was also very affective that you closed with a different question but you answered the question before you asked it!

Disobedience does promote process and change. For example, what if Martin Luther King Jr. had not practiced the act of civil disobedience? Letters from the Birmingham Jail changed everything. People began to see racism differently, for what it really was. On a similar note, Rosa Parks's act of disobedience sparked a movement. Without the actions of these two civil rights activists, laws like the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination of any kind, would not have been passed. Joan of Arc is another individual who was so disobedient that she died for it. Without speaking our mind, we would be the same. We would just deal with the horror of life that exist because of corruption. Just as Tim mentioned, just like in the communist countries. Disobedience makes America better than those places.

This comment has been removed by the author.

What is disobedience? Some people may say that disobedience is a horrible thing to make a habit or make it known to within the brains of human kind. However, the people that think this are only half right. Disobedience can be a form of disrespect so it needs to be used in the most wise ways. There was a movie that I watched when I was little called Matilda. There was a family of three consisting of a mother, a father, and their son. The mother decided that she got lonely at home and decided that she wanted t adopt a little girl. The day that she was able to pick up her new child, she neglected her and never gave her the attention that a baby girl should have. The little girls name was Matilda, she was left to fend for herself. The family was so caught up in watching junk on tv and eating fast food for dinner close to every night. When the original members of the family would go out for the day they would leave Matilda alone. She was very smart and didn’t want to become like the family that adopted her so any chance she got, she went to the library to read books to learn as much as she could. She finally worked up the courage to ask her father if she could go to school for the first time, but he denied. Instead of allowing the child to expand her horizons, he made her watch junk on tv with the rest of the family. He held her head towards the tv that she was forced to watch the junk that was on every night. However, when the father discovered that there was a school with a principle as strict as he was, he agreed to send the child that he neglected to school. Matilda was beyond happy that she was able to make friends and learn new things everyday, but when the principle met Matilda her enthusiasm was put down and she was put into a sort of detention. Matilda didn’t understand any of the people in her life and she wasn’t about to obey people that were leading her in the wrong path. In the end of the movie, Matilda is adopted by a different family because of the things that she has done. She disobeyed. Her new family didn’t neglect her so she listened to them. Disobedience is in fact a valuable human trait that promotes social progress. However, the way disobedience is used affects what the outcome will be. So be wise and never disobey God.

I really enjoyed reading your blog! I love that you used Matilda as a reference! You made a perfect argument that disobedience can be good or bad depending how one uses it. Nice job!

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Civil Disobedience — Oscar Wilde’s Views on Disobedience as a Valuable Human Trait

Oscar Wilde's Views on Disobedience as a Valuable Human Trait

• Categories: Civil Disobedience Oscar Wilde

About this sample

Words: 770 |

Updated: 7 December, 2023

Words: 770 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Video Version

18th century of American history, Oscar Wilde’s claim, example of the colonists rebellion, prime example of disobedience, Disobedience, start of the American Revolution, American Revolution, colonists, social progress, act of disobedience, Boston Massacre, American history, demonstration of disobedience, incidents of disobedience

Prompt Examples for “Oscar Wilde’s Views on Disobedience” Essay

• Oscar Wilde’s Perspective: Examine Oscar Wilde’s perspective on disobedience and its value as a human trait, as expressed in his writings and philosophy.
• Defining Disobedience: Define the concept of disobedience and discuss its various forms, considering whether it can be a valuable trait in certain contexts.
• Historical and Social Context: Analyze the historical and social context in which Oscar Wilde lived and wrote, and how it may have influenced his views on disobedience.
• Examples and Counterarguments: Provide examples from Oscar Wilde’s works and literature to support the idea that disobedience can be valuable, while also considering counterarguments that oppose this view.
• Relevance Today: Discuss the relevance of Wilde’s perspective on disobedience in contemporary society, examining whether his views still hold value in today’s world.

Works Cited

• Hedges, C. (2009). Empire of illusion: The end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle. Nation Books.
• King, M. L. (1963). Letter from a Birmingham Jail. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
• Arendt, H. (1972). Crises of the Republic: Lying in politics; civil disobedience; on violence; thoughts on politics and revolution. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Thoreau, H. D. (1854). Walden. Ticknor and Fields.
• Chomsky, N. (2013). Masters of mankind: Essays and lectures, 1969-2013. Haymarket Books.
• Zinn, H. (2003). A people’s history of the United States. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
• Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of peace research, 6(3), 167-191.
• Foucault, M. (1997). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage Books.
• Gandhi, M. K. (1961). Non-violent resistance (Satyagraha). Dover Publications.
• Tarrow, S. (2011). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. Cambridge University Press.

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Oscar Wilde’s Art of Disobedience

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Revisiting his critical writing, we learn a valuable lesson about the critic’s role in refusing bad taste and bad politics.

“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue,” Oscar Wilde declares in his 1891 essay, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” “It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”

Books in review

The critical writings of oscar wilde: an annotated selection.

“Classic Wilde,” you might think. Isn’t it like him to argue that the betterment of civilization depends upon misbehavior? Since his death in 1900, at the age of 46, the writer’s popular image as a provocateur has only strengthened, and not without cause. In Wilde’s oeuvre, contradiction is not merely a rhetorical attitude, but an implicit intellectual challenge. Yet as a critic and essayist, his commitment to insubordination is also entangled with a lifelong philosophical inquiry into the conundrum of creating art on one’s own terms, unburdened by the demands of public opinion or by a milieu’s prevailing aesthetic conventions. If yielding to authority was tantamount to degradation, as Wilde believed, beauty and art could flourish only in conditions of freedom, which by his own definition constituted a utopia of socialist hedonism. “Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt,” he writes. Rather than brute, “unintellectual” labor, human life ought to be occupied by the sorts of activities likely to draw accusations of idleness: creative pastimes of one’s choosing or absolute contemplative leisure.

His body of criticism, newly collected in The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde , cultivates an aesthetic of disobedience. Its language—sly, limber, epigrammatic—models the same rebellious individualism that it so fiercely advocates. In this annotated volume, editor Nicholas Frankel assembles a selection of Wilde’s most famous nonfiction writing, largely devoted to the matters of how an artist creates art and how others should receive it. Frankel divides this collection into four chronologized groups: reviews, essays and dialogues, letters to the press, and epigrams and paradoxes. Together, they illuminate a swaggering intellectual career that spans not just the novel, the play, and the poem but also, to a prodigious degree, the periodical.

As Frankel suggests in his introduction, “Wilde approached the writing of criticism with wit, irony, and a consummate sense of style, so much so that his critical writing is often hardly recognizable as criticism .” This flouting of rhetorical custom may itself be understood as a subtle form of defiance: a commitment to submitting language to a laboratory experiment of Wilde’s own devising. Take, for example, the argument that human progress requires disobedience, in which he invokes the latter’s “virtue,” as if the point of his writing is to yoke opposites, arousing tension through their unexpected alliance.

Wilde was no stranger to tension, or to scandal. The chutzpah of his criticism issues from his enduring friction with the cultural habits and assumptions of late Victorian England, from his resistance to complacency within a context he found sorely wanting. Yet inside that raucous rebellion, one cannot but discern a yearning impulse: that to obey, or not, could finally diminish as relevant modes of sociality; that an individual—queer, Irish, aesthetically flamboyant—could commit himself to beauty amid the peril fomented by an anxious nation scouting out transgression on every page.

By the late 19th century, Great Britain’s literary ecosystem was populated by a roster of venerated critics: Thomas Carlyle loomed large in the field, his sway unhindered by his death in 1881. Matthew Arnold’s 1865 essay “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”—which Wilde would take to task 25 years later—famously champions the work of critics as crucial to literature in the wake of much public disparagement. John Ruskin and Walter Pater played crucial roles in art history and aesthetics, and each was uniquely indispensable to Wilde’s own thinking. But whatever intellectual debts Wilde owed to his critical forebears, he would not compound them through stylistic mimicry. Even the most recreational readers of Wilde could not confuse him for the author of The Stones of Venice (written by Ruskin in 1851) or Studies in the History of the Renaissance (written by Pater in 1873, and often referred to by Wilde as “my golden book”). Nor did the figure of “the critic,” chiseled in the Victorian imagination as a Carlyle-like symbol of sober wisdom, appeal to Wilde’s puckishness.

While he delighted in the role of the critic, Wilde was the first to admit his own limits. A critic cannot confer truth to his readers, nor should he attempt to do so, Wilde argued. At most, a critic can propose the terms of conversation. He implies that the power of language is essentially dialogic; it draws significance through its summoning of oppositions. Frankel delineates this impulse in Wilde’s criticism, identifying it as a proto-Bakhtinian “dialectical understanding of the truth”—an understanding that renders proof and reliability as red herrings. “No artist desires to prove anything,” Wilde asserts in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray , for “even things that are true can be proved.”

To scout out the precise coordinates of Wilde’s critical inconsistencies would be to miss his greater rhetorical point. (“Who wants to be consistent?” asks Vivian in his 1889 dialogue, “The Decay of Lying: An Observation.”) Still, his mercurial tendencies were not always choreographed. Early in his career, Wilde argued that artistic self-sufficiency existed in autonomous relation to one’s milieu. “Such an expression as English art is a meaningless expression,” he told the Royal Academy’s art students in an 1883 lecture. “Nor is there any such thing as a school of art even. There are merely artists, that is all.” Like the Greek deities depicted in Wilde’s beloved Hellenistic sculpture, artistic sensibility is born unto the artist with inviolable sanctity; it is a tidy, closed system, he suggests, dependent only upon itself.

Yet within two years’ time, Wilde changed his mind and began to acknowledge, even to insist upon the significance of cultural context. “An artist is not an isolated fact,” he writes in “Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’Clock” (1885), a withering review of the American painter’s lecture on aestheticism; “he is the resultant of a certain milieu and a certain entourage, and can no more be born of a nation that is devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a thistle.” Wilde had once counted James McNeil Whistler among his friends, but the affection between them soured as Wilde’s views shifted to an irreconcilably opposing position. One blistering point of contention regarded the critic’s role in artistic discourse. In his lecture, Whistler laments the scourge of criticism, condemning its practitioners as “the middleman in this matter on Art.” Criticism, in Whistler’s estimation, amounts to little more than static interference: “It has widened the gulf between the people and the painter, has brought about the most complete misunderstanding as to the aim of the picture.”

The Nation Weekly

Wilde saw the matter differently. He also knew that Whistler had long harbored a grudge against Victorian critics. In 1878, Whistler had filed a libel suit against Ruskin for a mean review. The artist won the case, although the jury conveyed its disdain for the proceedings by awarding him only a farthing in damages. Nonetheless, as Frankel writes in his introduction, the ruling in such a public case imperiled the critic’s “hitherto unquestioned authority.” The case implied the triumph of the artist over the critic, which is a constant conflict that still produces a thorny question: Why should critics possess the authority to critique art they did not create?

Wilde pokes at this question in “Mr. Whistler’s 10 O’Clock” and attempts to settle it through a shift in vocabulary: “I say that only an artist is a judge of art…. For there are not many arts, but one art merely: poem, picture and Parthenon, sonnet and statue…he who knows one knows all.” This statement foreshadows a more explicit moment of philosophical departure, in which Wilde demands criticism’s recognition as an aesthetic equivalent to other artistic forms. Even Matthew Arnold, one of criticism’s most famous defenders, had declined to make this leap: “The critical power is of lower rank than the inventive,” he admitted. Arnold’s critic does not create art but instead evaluates, assembles, organizes.

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Although an admirer of Arnold, Wilde could not abide what seemed to him a diminishing of the critic’s role. A critic was no mere lens by which to reflect a superior creation, nor a pale imitation of literary artistry. The cultural contributions made by critics warranted appreciation on their own terms. Wilde issued his own apologia in 1890 by way of his famous dialogue, “The Critic as Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing.” Initially titled “The True Function and Value of Criticism,” it delivers a pointed refutation of Arnold’s thesis.

The conversation unfolds between Wilde’s slick, in-dialogue proxy, Gilbert, and his skeptical interlocutor, Ernest, who feeds Gilbert a handy supply of queries and protestations that incite his elaboration on the art of criticism. “You seem to me to be allowing your passion for criticism to lead you a great deal too far,” Ernest protests. “For, after all, even you must admit that it is much more difficult to do a thing than to talk about it.” Gilbert, who shares the author’s love of sly contradiction, is prepared for this moment, epigrams loaded in his quiver: “Not at all. That is a gross popular error…. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it…. [Action] is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.”

Here is a defense of criticism that refuses all prior terms and is shaped instead by Wilde’s own pleasure-centered metric. Loath to accommodate an industrializing empire’s fetish for productivity, he casts the writing of criticism in opposition to exertion of any sort. As Gilbert and Ernest debate, they gaze at the night sky, where “the moon…gleams like a lion’s eye”; Egyptian cigarettes dangle from their fingers. As Frankel notes in his introduction, “The critic is an artist, to be sure, but he is also a corporeal creature, whose thoughts and ideas are extensions of his physical life, not a repudiation of it.” In the domain of Wilde’s dialogues, his speakers are at liberty to enact the conditions that Wilde understands as central to creative work. If it is the critical instinct, not the creative one, that breeds innovation, then the critic requires the stillness afforded by “doing nothing”—by settling into one’s flesh and heeding one’s own impressions, wherever they meander.

Gilbert’s position in “The Critic as Artist” is seductive, but it courts disagreement. When I’ve read this dialogue in the past, my reactions have sometimes eked into Ernest territory. One could dispense with Arnold’s solemn distinction between critical and creative abilities without landing where Wilde does. But why would one read Wilde in pursuit of intellectual mitigations? Rather, one turns to him because the extravagance of his theories begets the most enthralling possibilities. Or as Gilbert concludes, “To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not necessarily bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticizes.”

There are a few peculiar lines at the conclusion of Wilde’s 1885 essay, “The Truth of Masks: A Note on Illusion,” in which he offers a sly disclaimer to the argument he would make five years later:

Not that I agree with everything that I have said in this essay. There is much with which I entirely disagree. The essay simply represents an artistic standpoint, and in aesthetic criticism attitude is everything.

The critic shoulders many artistic and intellectual responsibilities, but always saying precisely what one believes is not among them. As the essay’s title implies, a writerly posture—a linguistic mask—might signify more than any so-called authentic claim. Performance, Wilde knew, was a reliably tangible fact of existence; another person’s truth was a glint on the horizon, easily contested and endlessly deferred.

In April 1895, during Wilde’s failed libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, he was questioned about a line in his series of epigrams, “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young” (1894): “A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes it.” Wilde explained that according to his “philosophical definition,” truth was “something so personal…that in fact the same truth can never be apprehended by two minds.” The court could not abide such vast ideological diversity, particularly when posited by a man who, soon after, would be convicted of gross indecency for homosexuality. Wilde’s truth—and his adherence to it—yielded criminal condemnation and punishment: It signified an illicit, unpardonable refusal.

In “The Critic as Artist,” Wilde also invokes the matter of necessary disobedience, although he draws on more strident language than he does in “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” “What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress,” Gilbert declares. But lest the reader misinterpret the remark as equivocal, he presses the point: “Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless…. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.” Perhaps these lines comprise a kind of beatitude, uttered for those who, like Wilde, resisted impossible assimilatory demands. Or perhaps they’re a nudge to the docile reader: The only route to Utopia is illuminated by disobedience.