Socialism and the Possibility of Utopia in Wesker Trilogy

Abstract

Every modern epoch seems to produce a small number of artists whose work provides society with an antidote to the ignorance of its own exhaustion. Arnold Wesker is one of these writers who offer this therapeutic service to an ailing body. The Wesker Trilogy (1960) has charted the gradual fading of Communist faith and youthful energy among a group of Jews in the East End of London (1936-1959). In this article the author has applied sociological approach, remarkably moral and philosophical socialism, to The Wesker Trilogy in order to reveal Wesker’s most ambitious achievement and impressive contribution to the English New Wave Theatre and all his working-class audiences. Therefore, the quest for a radically reconfigured socialism, which Wesker articulates with force and passion in The Trilogy, appears by the late 1960s as a quest for survival, not only for the Left itself but for all humankind. Meanwhile, he works to protect human freedom and dignity and to promote a life worth living. Although he follows many of the goals of socialism, he willingly subordinates his socialist principles of solidarity and communal cooperation to defending the rights of the individual. In Wesker’s estimation, no political or religious cause?not even Judaism or socialism?is worth the sacrifice of individual liberty. Finally, what is discussed here is Wesker’s notion of utopia. He thinks that the belief in the utopian ideal could provide a meaning and order for life.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n3s1p296