Literature is the mirror of society, something that is known to all. It is a thing that reacts as normal reflection and expresses the inner structure of human mind before us. A critical analysis of minds is another name of literature. Human mind is discussed here with utmost efforts. With the birth of literature, it becomes the mirror of society. Now, what does the mirror signify? Mirror is just like a canvas or a screen that can represent a thing which befalls it. Likewise, literature reacts just like a mirror. It is a type of tasteful sketch with pen on white pages. But through the artful sketch, wonderfully the real social picture of an age gets revealed in such a way that charms/bewitches us. It performs like a normal reflection and reflects the total image of a body.
History is nothing but a series of circumstances or incidents. Through history we can come to know the time of that phenomenon along with the outer impression on social and political field. But if we want to know what was the inner result of that phenomenon, or its impression on people, history fails to satisfy our hunger. That time, literature comes forward to take that responsibility through historical compositions that leads us to the past days infested with the then inhabitants. Then we can taste the fresh talks of hearts. In this way, it represents the social situation along with the time and age.
Now, we will have to try to find out the ways how literature performs and gives us the inner sight of an age. Through epics, we get the heroic characters like Ram in ‘Ramayana’ and Basudaba Shri Krishna along with Arjun in ‘Mahabharata’. The performances of the heroic characters charm us. On the other hand, we get familiar with the ways, they had tried hard to remove the evil and established everything that is good on Earth. Through those epics, we get familiar with the socio-political condition of that age and the emergence of the evil.
The comparison between the present and the ancient age is revealed through those compositions. We can collect news about the process of interchanging news between two kingdoms and the mechanism of battles. Any composition during the devastating famine of the Bengali era 1176 and 1350 (According to Bengali Calender) reveals the terrible conditions of that age. The impasse of social-condition is represented very artfully through it.
We all know that there was a great social inequality between higher and lower classes. It remains a theory untill we read Saratchandra. But after reading Saratchandra, we get a practical living image that stirs our heart and evokes tears in our eyes and represents how cruel the human being is. We all know what does famine signify. But a drama named ‘Navanna’ by Bijan Bhattacharya, a heart-rending fight between man and dog for food adds an unique feature.
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