Look Back in Anger

The relationship between Jimmy and Alison is unstable and tempestuous, to put it mildly. Indeed, one could say their marriage is an abusive disaster, with Jimmy verbally lashing out at his wife on...

The title forecasts the general emotional tone of the play: angry. Look Back in Anger is all about the protagonist's fury at the outmoded social system which holds him back. Jimmy Porter is...

The title refers to the characters' attitudes towards their lives in general, but Jimmy's in particular. There is a sense that life is passing them by, that they are growing older without things...

Sure! After World War II, there was a new phrase that appeared that was originally coined by Leslie Allen Paul: "angry young men." Basically, these were English men (usually of the working...

Jimmy Porter is one of the most challenging antiheroes to come out of the twentieth-century theater. He is a frustrated man: though highly intelligent, the rigid English class structure prevents...

The premise of the play is that Jimmy is lower-middle-class, both Helena and Alison are upper/middle-class, and most of their problems stem from this difference. Alison is less excitable and...

The ending of Look Back In Anger has generated a good deal of critical controversy over the years. For some critics, the ending feels somehow tacked on; an artificially sentimental final scene in a...

I would argue that Cliff is presented as the antidote to Jimmy. While Jimmy is angry, Cliff is calm. While Jimmy is prone to throwing around verbal abuse, Cliff is a peacemaker. Cliff is warm,...

There are several reasons for Jimmy's anger. One is socioeconomic: Jimmy, as a member of the lower-middle class, is discontent with his role in life as the proprietor of a sweet shop. He yearns for...

Jimmy Porter is a member of the first wave of working-class people in England that attended university. However, like many of the so-called angry young men of the fifties and sixties, he feels that...

Look Back in Anger first opened in 1956. Declared a chauvinistic play by the critics of the time, it has undergone revision over the years, and many contemporary scholars think that it is unfair to...

While different characters embrace anger and frustration in Osborne's work, no character embodies it more than Jimmy. His entire being is the result of anger and frustration. One aspect of...

How the characters in Look Back in Anger influence each other is a very interesting question. Some critics might argue that part of the existential dilemma of the play is that they don't influence...

Writers use the idea of a foil as a way to highlight the flaws in one character by contrasting the differences between them. In John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, Cliff is clearly a foil for Jimmy...

Look Back in Anger centers on Jimmy’s preoccupation with death and loss. While these concerns are rooted in his childhood loss of his father, Jimmy harbors anger through his inability to free...

Look Back in Anger presents an interesting psychological portrait of the main character, Jimmy. When he was young, Jimmy watched his father die from wounds sustained in the Spanish Civil War. This...

The bear and squirrel symbolizes Jimmy's and Alison's immature role-play game to escape from their socially and emotionally violent class differences. Jimmy and Alison are bear and squirrel living...

One can answer your question partly by recognizing that, in the 60 years since Look Back in Anger premiered, our ideas on what actually constitutes masculinity have changed. Jimmy Porter seems...

The various symbols are used throughout the play to highlight what Jimmy Porter sees as his stultifying existence in 1950s Britain. One such symbol is the broadsheet newspaper, which symbolizes...

Look Back in Anger is a 1956 play written by English playwright John Osborne. Previous plays were dominated by the escapist theatre, which avoided broaching the dark, difficult, and harsh aspects...

Of John Osborne's themes in Look Back in Anger, I would single out two as having special importance. First, the play deals with class conflict. Jimmy, though he has been to university, despises the...

One of Jimmy's consistent lines of social critique is the fact that modern England consists of people who do not "feel" anything. They are insulated by routine, a sense of monotony that prevents...

Let us remember that this play is famous for its depiction of the iconic angry young man, a character which became a feature of such plays and works emerging from around this time. When we consider...

John Osborne wrote the play Look Back in Anger in 1956. The play is an intensely realistic tale, a "kitchen sink" drama that presents harsh realism as a counter to the escapist plays and musicals...

It is a matter of debate whether Look Back in Anger is a misogynistic play or whether it simply reflects the attitudes of its time. A certain school of feminist thought tends towards the former...

It is clear from this play that class is a central theme that dominates the action and relationships between the characters. Note how Jimmy defiantly comes from the working class and how he hates...

Look Back in Anger is often viewed as a drama, but it could be played as a dark comedy as well. Dark comedy mines serious subject matter for humor—generally the more taboo the better. Osbourne...

Osborne's work depicts how there is a frustration and anger within the younger generation because of the lack of fulfilled promises. With the ending of the war, there seemed to be a feeling in...

Though John Osborne's play represented a new level of realism, occurring during the same period as Tennessee Williams's and Arthur Miller's work in the U.S., much of Look Back in Anger can be seen...

Jimmy Porter feels alienated from both his wife and society in general. He is a struggling middle class working man who is bored and confined by his monotonous life. His wife Alison has come to...

One way in which the theme of Osborne's drama has relevance to the modern setting is how Jimmy still exists today. Jimmy feels fundamentally slighted by the world around him. He feels that he has...

Look Back in Anger was a revolutionary play for the mid-1900s because it (1) was loaded with emotion, (2) represented the alienation of much of England's youthful population during a time of...

Jimmy Porter was an angry man. His politics were parallel to many of the people of England in 1956. He would constantly gripe and preach about the “establishment” and the “elite” being in...

I actually grew up in the Midlands, believe it or not! What is interesting about the Midlands as an area of the UK is that it is considered to be a location of the rising middle classes, which we...

John Osborne's three-act play, Look Back in Anger, established him as the "Angry Young Man" of the mid-1950s British theatre. The play features candy peddler Jimmy Porter, himself quite an angry...

At least in its outward message, Osborne's approach toward women does not come off well by modern standards and even by the standards of his own time, the 1950s. It would be difficult to make a...

The short answer to this question is that Helena has an affair with her best friend's husband. Unfortunately, this is another manifestation of the air of cynicism that pervades the play. It's...

Look Back in Anger by John Osborne is primarily a commentary on the social, economic, and political situation in England, not Europe as a whole. Unlike the cosmopolitan modernists, the Angry Young...

I think that marriage is shown to be complex. Certainly, marriage is shown to house some fairly emotionally brutal moments. Jimmy's tirades on Alison and the cruelty he displays towards her would...

I think that one way in which we can find the theme of Osborne's work relevant to modern times is because there is not merely one theme that applies, but multiple themes from the work that have...

We learn later on that she is ultimately going to have an affair with Jimmy, and after she tells him that Allison is pregnant, she also receives the wrath of him which is received with a...

The aim of the play is to show the way in which the closed and stratified British class system creates anger in working-class people like Jimmy Porter. Though Jimmy is an intellectual with a...

There are several themes in A Look Back in Anger, but I think the most obvious is class/social structures of society and how the terms that come along with them affect people and their everyday...

Stage directions can be complicated for two reasons: one, directors may choose to ignore them in favor of stylistic or other creative changes, subject to their own interpretation. Two, stage...

One of the central themes of this important play is that of alienation and loneliness, that is of course presented to us in the character of Jimmy Porter. In particular, Osborne uses him as a...

In a stylistic manner, yes. The play Look Back in Anger , by John Osborne, attempts to break free from the former generation of playwrights prior to the 1950's. During that era, playwrights had a...

The effects of World War II are apparent on the characters in Look Back in Anger. Jimmy Porter is a cynical character who voices the feeling of the age. He tries to remind his friend Cliff Lewis...

Marchbanks is a reference to a character for George Bernard Shaw's play Candida. In the book Looking Back in Anger, the characters are discussing Jimmy's romantic history, and he is called...

The "Angry Young Men" generation was defined with a spirit of "Damn you, England." It was a statement that sought to actively construct a dissenting stance against conformist affirmations of the...

This is one of Jimmy's choicest lines in the drama. It is a statement of how Jimmy and Alison's mother truly detest one another. He has nothing but contempt for her because she represents the...