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 Men and associated Movement and Group were British literary movements that were inward-looking, concerned with a "small England" that had declined from an imperial power to one among many developed nations and had been weakened by World War II.

A key factor in the circumstances of the play is that after World War II, educational opportunities were made available to people of the working and lower classes in England, especially to veterans, but they still lacked social and economic mobility due to the rigidity of the class structure. This is the key element in the anger and alienation of the protagonist Jimmy Porter, who is trapped in a medial job despite being intelligent and educated.