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Critical Notes on John Osborn’s
“Look Back in anger”
it is centered on the marital problems of Jimmy Porter, a very
complex personality who is full of anger for a dreary deluding present. He is a
University graduated who makes a living by running a market sweet stall. He is
married to Alison and they share their flat with Jimmy’s friend, Cliff, for economic
reasons. They belong to different social classes and that leads to many conflicts
between them. Alison, who is pregnant, following the advice of her friend Helena,
leaves Jimmy. Jimmy starts an affair with Helena. In the end Jimmy and Alison are
together again. They try to find out a way out to live together even if they are not
able to resolve their problems and conflicts. As we can see, the plot is rather
conventional: it is the eternal triangle theme.
Like Waiting for Godot, Look Back in Anger has got a circular
structure: the three acts start and finish in the same place, Jimmy’s flat, at the
same time, a Sunday morning, with the same setting with the characters doing
the same actions in the third and first act: Jimmy and Cliff engaged in their
everlasting discussion about Sunday’s papers and Helena and Alison engaged with
the ironing-board and dressed in the same way, wearing a shirt of Jimmy’s. In
both acts Cliff undresses on the stage. Osborne uses this closed-cycle technique
to restore actual life to the stage and to convey the dullness and repetitivity of
everyday routine life.
As we can see, from the point of view of the structure, the play is not
revolutionary; it follows the traditional pattern of the well-made play: exposition,
climax or complication or denouncement, final resolution of the action. Look Back
in Anger shocked the audience for the language, the accurate realism of its
setting and for its socialist themes.
is the real break away from the previous plays: it is genuine,
simple and straightforward language, but full of slang and colloquialism,
provoking and revolutionary, crude, aggressive and violent. It has nothing to do
with the conventional upper-class diction of the previous plays and it is easily
understood by everybody.
too, is shocking. It is the typical habitat of the working class
families, depicted in accurate details: a shabby and gloomy room.
The two iconic motifs of the play are the aforementioned concepts
of the Angry Young Man and the Kitchen Sink drama. The Angry Young Man
motif came to be associated with a group of young writers and artists -- John
Osborne and Kingsley Amis being foremost amongst them -- that the cultural
public believed to personify an anger, boredom, and frustration with British
cultural life that many working class families felt during this time.
The idea of the Kitchen Sink drama was also a revelation for British theater. The
stylings of most British theater before Look Back in Anger favored Victorian
dramas and comedies or stagings of classical plays. In a general sense, the
Victorian plays dealt mostly with polite themes from the late 19th and early 20th
century upper ruling class. In contrast, Osborne's play depicted the raw emotions
and living conditions of the working class. This style of theater was given the
name "Kitchen Sink" because of its focus on the interior domestic and emotional
lives of ordinary people. In the case of Look Back in Anger, the kitchen is literally a
part of the set.
is the struggling against Institutions. All of his plays are
pleas for justice, freedom and tolerance. They all, with the exception of The
Entertainer, deal with social indignation and the plight of the individual as a
victim of his society.
It develops through the widespread uneasiness of the young generation who are
bored with the social injustice and the persistence of rigid class privileges and
were dissatisfied with the stagnation of the economic and intellectual life of
Britain. Osborne expresses his admiration for the rich humanity of the working
class which contrasts the insensitivity and lack of value of the upper class. He also
faces the theme of the Generation Gap between young people and adults.
Someone thinks that the Angry Generation of the 1950s was born when in 1950
the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were opened to everybody, while
before they were only accessible to wealthy students. The young people of the
working class origin, represented on the stage by Jimmy Porter, find that contrary
to their expectations, British society is by no means a meritocracy, but that
success depends on social position and wealth.
There are also some sub-themes; among them we can mention the existential
failure and the pain of being alive.

1. Kitchen Sink Drama: the term ‘kitchen sink drama’ was used to describe the
   British cultural movement that was developed in1950 and 1960’s. In theatre, art,
   novels, etc., the heroes were usually shown as the ‘angry young men’. They used
   the domestic social style to depict the real life situations of the working class
   people. Like in ‘Look Back in Anger’ the Act 1 opens in attic room at the top of a
   large Victorian House.
   There we can see the kitchen, gas stove, dining table, double bed, ironing board,
   food cupboard all on the stage. The previous living room setting was changed to
   kitchen. The term was derived from expressionist painting of John Bratby. The
   paintings by him were of kitchen sink, his themes for painting were kitchen,
   bathroom, and toilets. This type of drama showed the regular life of ordinary
   people who were struggling against the degeneration of powerlessness. The
   playwrights like John Osborne, John Arden, Arnold Wesker, and Shelagh Delaney
   called themselves as ‘Kitchen Sink Dramatist’.


2. Angry Young Man: The play was first themed as ‘Angry Young Man’. The
   term was described as a generation of post-world war 2 artists and working class
   were leftist, anarchist, politics. According to cultural critics, these young men
   were not a part of any organisation movement but instead, individuals angry at a
   post-Victorian Britain that refused to acknowledge their social and class
   alienation. As in the play, the protagonist Jimmy Potter is considered as the
   ‘Angry Young Man’ as he shows the anger against the society, class
   discrimination, lack of opportunities. The another reason for his anger was in
   1950’s there was a movement where the people from the working class were
   shifting to middle class but they were not allowed to have the pleasures of the
   middle class people and they were still not accepted as the middle class and so
   the reason for Jimmy’s anger was, the strict rule and barriers of the class structure
   they were not able to enjoy the luxurious of the middle class.


3. Marriage: The martial theme that is portrayed by Osborne in the play, depicts
   the social condition in that period. In that period the marriages were not very
   successful and the divorce rate was high. We can understand this by the
   relationship of Jimmy and Alison, they both got married as they loved each other.
   Alison married Jimmy opposing to her parents and it was like Jimmy won the war
   by marrying the aristocratic class woman. There was also emotional cruelty,
   domestic pain, and emptiness in their relationship. They always came together in
   a fairy tale or the world of escape bears and squirrels. It was shows that Jimmy
   was not loyal to Alison as when Alison leaves house, he develops a love
   relationship with Helena.
   The iron board that is presented in Act 1 where Alison is always ironing
   symbolises the stability in their relationship and in the latter part of Act 1 the iron
   board collapses shows the instability in their relationship and Alison leaves. The
   iron board is then replaced by Helena in Act 3. In theme we also see the
   autobiographical element of Osborne and his first wife Pamela, as Osborne also
   had issues with her and it also gives the glimpse of his affairs as in the character of
   Helena.
   12- 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 the play in specific examples in which Jimmy
   Porter emotionally distresses Alison, his wife, 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 into a twentieth century culture that he sees as becoming increasingly
   feminized. This feminization is seen in the way that British culture shows an
   "indifference to anything but immediate, personal suffering." This causes a
   deadness within which Jimmy's visceral anger and masculine emotion is a
   retaliation against.