Analysis of Non-African Drama: Look Back in Anger by John Osborne II – SS2 Literature-in-English Lesson Note (Third Term)

Look Back in Anger is a play by John Osborne about Jimmy Porter, an angry young man who is frustrated with post-war British society. Its main themes are the angry young man, kitchen sink drama, loss of childhood, real life, sloth in British culture, the decline of the British Empire and masculinity in art.

Behavioural objectives

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

• explain the term “Angry Young Man” and how Jimmy Porter fits it;
• describe kitchen sink drama and the part Osborne’s play played in the realist tradition;
• show how loss of childhood affects Jimmy and Alison Porter;
• explain how Colonel Redfern represents the decline of the British Empire;
• discuss the criticism that Osborne holds misogynistic views, and Osborne’s reply.

What are the main themes in Look Back in Anger?

The Angry Young Man

Osborne’s play was among the first to treat the theme of the “Angry Young Man”. This term describes a generation of post-World War II artists and working-class men who generally subscribed to leftist, sometimes anarchist, political and social views. According to cultural critics, these young men were not part of any organised movement. They were individuals angry at a post-Victorian Britain that refused to acknowledge their social and class alienation.

Jimmy Porter is often considered to be literature’s seminal example of the angry young man. Jimmy is angry at the social and political structures that he believes have kept him from achieving his dreams and aspirations. He directs this anger towards his friends and, most notably, his wife Alison.

Kitchen sink drama

Kitchen sink drama is a term used to denote plays that rely on realism to examine domestic social relations. Realism in British theatre was first experimented with in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw. This genre attempted to capture the lives of the British upper class in a way that realistically reflected the ordinary drama of ruling-class British society.

According to many critics, by the mid-twentieth century the genre of realism had become tired and unimaginative. Osborne’s play returned imagination to the realist genre by capturing the anger and immediacy of post-war youth culture and the alienation that resulted in the British working classes. Look Back in Anger was able to comment on a range of domestic social dilemmas in this period. Most importantly, it captured, through the character of Jimmy Porter, the anger of this generation that festered just below the surface of elite British culture.

Loss of childhood

A theme that affects the characters of Jimmy and Alison Porter is the idea of a lost childhood. Osborne gives specific examples to show how Jimmy is forced to deal with suffering from an early age: his father died when Jimmy was only ten, and Jimmy was made to watch the physical and mental decline of the man. Alison’s loss of childhood is best seen in the way that she was forced to grow up too fast by marrying Jimmy. Her youth is wasted in the anger and abuse that her husband levels upon her.

Osborne suggests that a generation of British youth has experienced this same loss of childhood innocence. He uses the examples of World War, the development of the atomic bomb, and the decline of the British Empire to show how an entire culture has lost the innocence that other generations were able to maintain.

Real life

In the play, Jimmy Porter is consumed with the desire to live a more real and full life. He compares this burning desire to the empty actions and attitudes of others. At first, he generalises this emptiness by criticising the lax writing and opinions of those in the newspapers. He then turns his angry gaze to those around him and close to him: Alison, Helena and Cliff.

Osborne’s argument in the play for real life is one in which men are allowed to feel a full range of emotions. The most real of these emotions is anger, and Jimmy believes that this anger is his way of truly living. This idea was unique in British theatre during the play’s original run.

Osborne argued in essays and criticisms that, until his play, British theatre had played down the emotions of characters, which made them less realistic. Jimmy’s desire for real life is an attempt to restore raw emotion to the theatre.

Sloth in British culture

Jimmy Porter compares his quest for a more lively and emotional life to the slothfulness of the world around him. Jimmy sees the world around him as asleep in some fundamental way, and he does not see it as dead. This is a fine line that Osborne walks throughout the play. Jimmy never argues that there is a nihilism within British culture. Instead, he sees a kind of slothfulness of character, and his anger is an attempt to awaken those around him from this cultural sleep.

This slothfulness of emotion is best seen in the relationship between Alison and Cliff. Alison describes her relationship with Cliff as “comfortable”. They are physically and emotionally affectionate with each other, but neither seems to want to take their passion to another level of intimacy. In this way, their relationship is lazy, and they cannot awaken enough passion to consummate their affair.

Jimmy seems to understand this subconsciously, which is the reason he is not jealous of their affection towards one another.

The rise and fall of the British Empire

The character of Colonel Redfern, Alison’s father, represents the decline of, and nostalgia for, the British Empire. The Colonel had been stationed for many years in India, a symbol of Britain’s imperial reach into the world. The Edwardian age, which corresponded to Britain’s height of power, had been the happiest of his life.

His nostalgia is representative of the denial that Osborne sees in the psyche of the British people. The world has moved on into an American age, Osborne argues, and the people of the nation cannot understand why they are no longer the world’s greatest power.

Masculinity in art

Osborne has been accused by critics of misogynistic views in his plays. Many point to Look Back in Anger as the chief example. These critics accuse Osborne of glorifying young male anger and cruelty towards women and homosexuals. This is seen in specific examples in which Jimmy Porter emotionally distresses his wife Alison and delivers a grisly monologue in which he wishes for Alison’s mother’s death.

Osborne, however, asserts that he is attempting to restore a vision of true masculinity in a twentieth-century culture that he sees as becoming increasingly feminised. This feminisation is seen in the way that British culture shows an “indifference to anything but immediate, personal suffering”. This causes a deadness, and Jimmy’s visceral anger and masculine emotion are a reaction against it.

Evaluation

1. What does the term “Angry Young Man” describe, and how does Jimmy Porter fit it?
2. What is kitchen sink drama?
3. Give two examples Osborne uses to show Jimmy’s loss of childhood.
4. What does Colonel Redfern represent in the play?
5. Why have some critics accused Osborne of misogyny, and how does Osborne answer them?

Assignment

1. Explain how the relationship between Alison and Cliff shows the theme of sloth in British culture.
2. Describe how Jimmy Porter’s desire for “real life” shows Osborne’s view of emotion in British theatre.