Literature is the Reflection of Society

 

a.   

Literature represents life. A literary work presents the picture of human activities related with society, culture, politics, ecology, economy and so on. All literary genres including drama, fiction and poetry develop from social background. The world of a literary text looks like the world we are living in. The struggle of the characters in a story is not different from our own struggle here in real life. Like the real human beings, the characters in a drama feel happy in union and feel sad in separation. Literature can never escape the world- it takes its form based on the real world and human activities. Since literature imitates the happenings of the world and human life, it is regarded as the reflection of society.

 Literature is the history of the common people. It speaks of the stories of the ordinary ones. For example, a novel portrays the life of a farmer living in a remote village. It describes his or her hardships and view toward socio economic and political systems of their society. Generally history, which is a record of victorious rulers alone, sings a song of the influential personalities. It ignores the contribution of common people to the formation and development of a nation. In this regard, literature while describing the life of common people indicates their great role in nation building and prosperity of their land. Thus, literature presents the real picture of a society by writing about the life and role of the downtrodden people.

 Literature can feel the inner life of a country. It can read the feelings and emotions the country expresses. A nation is much more than its territory and government. The relationships between people, their attitude towards the authorities, and the stories of their satisfaction and dissatisfaction matter a lot in a country's life. A poet or an author is able to portray that emotional status of a society through their work. Thus, literature reveals the exact status of the country.

Literature represents all the three times- past, present and future. We know about the world of a long time ago through the literary texts. For instance, the two Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata tells us a lot about the life of the contemporary times. Surely the authors write about the present condition of the world to put pressure on the governments for improvement. And the authors foresee too. Based on the present dynamics of society, they make a prediction of the future too.  Since literature represents all the times and all the stories, it is called the mirror reflection of a society.