Social Realism in the Select Plays of John Osborne

Abstract

The advent of Social Realism has been seen against the prolonged discontent towards Romanticism and Idealization of human life through literary canvas. Social Realism rejected the exaggerated ego encouraged by Romanticism. Soon, it became an important art movement during the great depression in the United States during 1930 to 1960. Rapidly, it covered numerous aspects of human life, its reflection through art, painting, literature and all possible means of expressions. Social Realism was not an immediate reaction to the so called conventional form of literary expressions. It was the time, when the Great Britain was suffocating with the two World Wars, economical crisis, industrial revolution, the social unrest, the working class helplessness, etc. These social circumstances made people to analyze human life under the light of more unkind, ruthless realities of life. newlineAs literature is the reflection of human life, many proponents of literature, drama, cinema and other genres of literature reflected these realities with utmost sensitivity and diligence. They focused on the ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working class people, particularly the poor and suffering class. Their expressions were dispassionate, realistic and down-to-earth. Obviously, the dramatists such as, Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, John Arden, Harold Pinter, John Russell Taylor and George Devine, have popularized these plays by expressing anger, frustration, discontent through their plays. Their literary expressions were identified and named as Angry Young Man Movement and the working class discontent in the time. John Osborne, indeed, introduced a renaissance in the British Theater. Osborne himself remains the first of the Angry Young Man to offer the biggest shock to the system of the British theater since the advent of G. B. Shaw. Osborne, achieved this much success when he was just at twenty six. newlineOsborne s Look Back in Anger (1957) transformed the British Theatre. John Osborne, used thea