Analysis Of Conditioning, Environment, Man, Society

playwright whose analysis of his society and evaluation of human behavior is utterly realistic. His writing covers almost every segment of the concerned socio-cultural environment. The present study deliberates on man vis-à-vis social milieu in his oeuvre. Through textual illustrations and critical assessment, it has been demonstrated how social conditioning of an individual takes place and gives it a unique but queer shape. Keywords: Conditioning, Environment, Man, Society.

Man is the product of his time and environment in which he lives. Time is always on wings, and the changes which occur in the socio-cultural environment affect the behavioral pattern of the people. It has been seen that environment has in it a power to mould an individual,

According to this new usage that everything that exists is a part of nature and can be well explicated by references to nature and natural causes rather than by any supernatural, spiritual and other paranormal causes. Therefore, it can be said that society, culture, and natural environment have a vital role to play in framing the sensibility of an individual. So he or she may be understood only in relation to them. They are framing factors responsible for both sociological and psychological upbringings of man. Actually Williamson has derived his thought of naturalism not from European and American fictional writers but from Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wielded a strong influence on the nineteenth century dramaturgy throughout the world. He has used this naturalistic mode with great efficacy and has become a model to be followed. His play Ghosts (1881) is a prototype in this field. As a model in naturalistic mode, Ibsen’s Ghosts assimilates all its principles and features: its themes that deals with the inner conflicts of the characters; a dramatic ambience that is closely related to the real people and cultural period of the play; and the milieu that favours individual

One of his avid readers Peter Fitzpatrick defines the importance of naturalistic mode in relation to his dramatic oeuvre and says that naturalism is a ‘slippery term’ and goes on to explain that “sometimes it is used as though it were synonymous with a simple verisimilitude; on other occasions it seems to imply a particular set of a philosophical assumptions, and a belief in the determining power of environment” (David Williamson 23). Applying this definition of naturalism to Williamson’s dramaturgy, it aptly suits in both ways. He is a realist writer whose situations and characters are closely attached to social and cultural environment. This environment has an inevitable role in determining the role of a character and thereby to pattern his or her individuality in a peculiar way. The social and cultural setting also provides a suitable chance for a person to give vent his psychological motivation in the form of internal emotions, thoughts, and conflicts while dealing with the given situation. His recurrent themes are certainly like- insecurities, inadequacies, uncertainties and other related concerns and dealings of Australian middle class people as he asserts: “I was really obsessively interested in human personality, in group behaviour, in the psychology of human species” (Sammut 105). All these explications evince that Williamson exploits both the social and