Naturalism is the extreme type of realism. Many writers have a philosophical idea about it. It is after impact of the Darwinian biology. Its thesis is that man is part of Nature. All creatures, together with man, comply with widespread ideas and patterns. Man’s tradition and faith can’t hold him other than the realm of Nature. The Naturalists consider that man is an animal of a better order, and is guided by heredity and surroundings.
Emile Zola, an eminent French author, formulated and popularized this idea. Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dresier, James Farrell and lots of different American writers adopted Naturalism. Thus that they had a goal and scientific perspective to literature.
Brutal frankness in manners and actions are the salient options of the modern naturalistic novels and dramas. Yet we could say that the road of demarcation between Realism and Naturalism could be very delicate. Frank realism is the chief attribute of this play. This play was written after the Second World War. It was an age of disillusion. Disillusionment was adopted by despair, cynicism, in the end leading to anger. Amis Kingsley’s “Lucky Jim” and John Wain’s “Hurry on Down” are a lurid image of young males who’re sick mannered. They take every thing calmly. They are rebels, however they have no idea precisely what and whom the riot is in opposition to.
Jimmy Porter is just not Lucky Jim. He stands between the cynics and the idealists. But his language is just not that of tradition and urbanity. His statements remind us of the characters of the Naturalistic plays. His bitterness produces a nice stream of savage discussion. He is just not a person however an able and efficient consultant of sophistication of angry young men.
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The fifties have been a barren interval for the British drama. T. S. Eliot was nonetheless in style, however his poetic dramas with all their beauties of workmanship, had little enchantment to the young males of the age who needed things in flesh and blood, in sweat and tears educated young males disliked verbal jugglery and magic of expression, elegant phrases and the language of desires and romance.
Yet in truth, Jimmy is just not actually a cynic born to castigate the society. He displays the psychology of a young man who man who’s caught in a situation. Behind all his toughness, rudeness and even vulgarity, he builds idealised images of man, women, institutions and things unable to achieve their beliefs, after which turns to bitterness. He believes in idealism. But he finds no reason to which he can dedicate himself whole-heartedly. That approach, right here isn’t any center on which he can focus his adolescent desires. If he had been born only a few years before, he would have been an ardent communist and fought in Spain like Spender and Cdwell. But he was born in age, which supplied nothing optimistic. It was intensely foolish and there was vacuum throughout. Therefore, he thought in regards to the previous where there was one thing to consider in, one thing to cling to. He has no emotional maturity. So he goes on pondering and speaking because he has nothing optimistic to do.
We could contemplate this play Naturalistic not for its style and language solely. It is naturalistic due to its tone and authenticity. It is a photographic play and the writer has given no touches of idealism, romance or glamour. As we discover in a conventional Naturalistic play, right here the room represents like a trap from which there isn’t any escape. One is doomed to remain inside. Those who’re contained in the room really feel that they’re caught in that trap. There are sounds of the outside world, however they’ve hardly any contact with them. For this cause, the folks in the room change into angry. Jimmy gets angry with himself in addition to with others. The room is the world in miniature, and the occupants are the annoyed characters of the post-war period. The society is sick, in truth, it’s dying.
Jimmy is the representative of young males whom Somerset Maughum describes as Scum. The characters are real, and so they communicate a direct language. Had Jimmy been within the Victorian and even the Georgian period, he would have been condemned each at home and abroad. He would have been thought to be a person annoyed idealist. But within the fifties of the twentieth century he is a perfect hero who represents frustration and despair of millions who’re searching for light. Jimmy and his followers haven’t any particular plan and are usually not effectively organised like employees. They haven’t any slogans to press their demands. They are like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat, which isn’t there.
Osborne is a social realist, and he has efficiently expressed the tone, the sense of frustration of the young males of the age. Jimmy is groping at the hours of darkness, and he complains that in his age folks do not need a cause to struggle for. That is what distinguishes him from others who’re self-satisfied.
Osborne is usually compared with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller who’ve introduced a brand new note often called ‘blue rhythms’, which means a melancholy tone. Both these American playwrights have a note of despair. But it’s completely different from the Existentialist pessimism. Both of them react to the society through which they’re sadly born. They specify their disgust in opposition to the absence of spiritual aspect. Only animal motivation is present in every single place. In this play there’s neither the melancholy tone nor animal motivation. Jimmy appears at women as detestable creatures. His estimate about Alison’s mother is brutally frank. He says, ‘That old bitch should be dead! I say, she ought to be dead… My God, those worms will need a good dose of salt the day they get through her! Alison’s mother is on the way. She will pass away, my friends!” These lines are beset with Naturalism. At the identical time, there’s a contact of idealism when he says, “I may write a look about us all. It’s all right here…. written in flames a mile excessive. It can be recollected in fire, and blood, my blood.” His hatred for women is clearly expressed in these phrases, “No, there is nothing left for it, my boy, but to set you be butchered by the women.” There should be some justification behind this hatred. About Alison’s love Jimmy says that it’s a hindrance to his development and fruition. We could contemplate this as love-hate relation, more hate than love. This is why he shifts from Alison to Helena and from Helena to Alison.
Thus the characters from this play personify post-war Britain’s situation. Jimmy is an idealist of ‘anger-care-love’ kind. He cares for humanity and refuses to simply accept the situations of life as they’re introduced to him. The result is in his anger and dissatisfaction. His anger is just not mere neurosis, however in his anger we discover a plea for more rights, wholesome faith, clear politics, equal and more alternatives for significant achievements and true values in life as a substitute of middle class morals. That manner, this play vividly mirrors the temper and the emotions of the youth of the Fifties and presents the life and society of the post-war England in a really naturalistic approach.
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