Critic Look Back In Anger 5q5612

Look Back in Anger has been referred to, by the critic Harold Hobson as, “an outright, unqualified condemnation of an entire society”. Do you agree with him? On May 8, the Royal Court theatre premiered the first play by a 26-year-old actor called John Osborne, a play that changed all the schemes and perceptions of its time, becoming a point of reference for the British theater of the subsequent generations. Many of the critics of the time commented on this new dramatic revelation that somehow gathered the collective feeling of the youth of the time and their social discontent: “The legend is that Look Back in Anger changed British theatre for ever, replacing stage-sets of Belgravia mansions with a drab Midlands flat, and smart upper-class remarks with the angry anti-establishment rants of its hero, Jimmy Porter. Look Back in Anger deliberately provoked bad feelings about Britain, the war-time generation and conventional drama.” [1] At the time Look Back in Anger was written, England was in a moral, political and social depression, where Osborne's generation was angry with the system and the way in which the simplest tasks were carried out. With a difficult life growing up, where his relationship with his parents was confused, a marriage failed, unemployment and poor housing conditions, he wrote this play as a representation of his own life. Criticism of politics, government, church, etc., is made by the main character Jimmy Porter, who is the voice of the British youth that carried the weight of consecutive wars. Therefore it is not “an outright, unqualified condemnation of an entire society”, but a means of expression and relief regarding the terrible circumstances in which people were living, especially the middle and lower classes of the time. The character Jimmy Porter expresses his feeling about different topics but he does it in a way so brutally honest that sometimes it is hard to it he is right. He wants something to happen, to shake things up. Because of the consequences of war people would live their lives as if they were machines, they did not want to discuss what was happening to them. So, he says: “Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm. Just another Sunday evening (…) I suppose people like me aren't supposed to be very patriotic. Somebody said—what was it— we get our cooking from Paris (that's a laugh), our politics from Moscow and our morals from Port Said” [2]. Jimmy’s attacks are not against abstract ideas. He realizes what this world of moribund custom is doing to him and to those he loves. It is his desire to awaken them to feelings, to being truly and vibrantly alive [3], so in the play we can see that over and over again he points out these problems in a strong way, to see if he can get any results, because many of these problems were not easy to understand and it seemed that nobody did a thing about them. Many of the things that are portrayed in Osborne’s play are topics people did not talk about. Osborne, in a clever way created a space to point out those things and to make people feel them, without caring if they liked it or not. So that is why this play shocked people so much because a

bunch of problem they did not care about where right in front of them: poverty, the class system and the hypocrisy of the English Church, among others. The old power structure based on the network of school and family connections were still very much in place, working for its own perpetuation. The Church of England was as much a part of the Establishment as the politicians and also seemed out of touch with the everyday realities of the people. For Jimmy, and for Osborne, they prevented people from looking at their lives and their society [3]. Jimmy comments: “What's the Bishop of Bromley say? (…) Oh, it says here that he makes a very moving appeal to all Christians to do all they can to assist in the manufacture of the H-Bomb. (…) He's upset because someone has suggested that he s the rich against the poor. He says he denies the difference of class distinctions. "This idea has been persistently and wickedly fostered by—the working classes!” [2]. Nevertheless, Jimmy Potter does portrait a really violent and misogynist point of view because of the way the way he treats women, first his wife Allison, then Helena, and the way he refers to Allison’s mother and family. For instance, he uses a very rude word to describe her, he says: “I quote: Pusillanimous. Adjective. Wanting of firmness of mind, of small courage, having a little mind, mean spirited, cowardly, timid of mind. From the Latin pusillus, very little, and animus, the mind. That's my wife! That's her isn't it? Behold the Lady Pusillanimous” [2]. But that is just the psychology of the character, and a really bad way of relieving tension and pain. So, at times it is hard to agree with him and even like what he is saying so he is far from being a working-class hero. But Look Back in Anger is as likely to remind the other side to the 1950s, if anything, reminding that post-war life was pretty wretched for many women in the years before the arrival of the permissive society in the late 1960s, and that the kitchen sink and the ironing board were seen as their rightful place by many men [4]. Some people were timid and indifferent, like Allison, but others felt the need to do something to change things, even to remind everyone all the time about it, he declares: “if the revolution ever comes, I'll be the first to be put up against the wall, with all the other poor old liberals” [2]. Look Back in Anger is a deeply felt drama of personal relationships, and it is because of that personal element that the play remains not only valid but also vivid to audiences today. Whatever its ultimate value, Look Back in Anger deserves continued critical attention for bringing about a miniature revolution in British theatre, precisely at the point when it most needed it [4]. Many of the reviews of the time were bad for Osborne, but he changed what it needed to be change in the British Theater. For Jimmy and Osborne, these things were real and were everyday life for the middle and lower classes, it was the way things were perceived and felt and suffered, not a condemnation of an entire society, but an angry voice shouting out loud to be heard for people to care. Osborne was the angry man of the hour: his was the right play at the right time. Bibliography: [1] Lawson M., (03-31-2016). Fifty Years of Anger. The Guardian News Report. Available online on: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2006/mar/31/theatre2. [Consulted on 10-08-2017] [2] Osborne J. (1956). Look Back in Anger. Play in three acts.

[3] Browne T. W. (02-11-2009). Criticism: Look Back in Anger. Available online on: http://lookback.wikidot.com/criticism. [Consulted on 10-12-2017] [4] Interesting Literature (02-07-2017). A Short Analysis of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. Information online available on: https://interestingliterature.com/2017/02/07/a-short-analysis-ofjohn-osbornes-look-back-in-anger/. [Consulted on 10-12-2017]