Ready Reference Treatise: Look Back In Anger

By Raja Sharma

“Look Back In Anger” by John Osborne is a very successful play. The play revolves around a love triangle.

Jimmy Porter is an educated and intelligent young man of working class; he is highly dissatisfied. Alison is his wife; she is from upper middle class, but she is quite impassive.

Helena Charles is the best friend of Alison; she is a haughty character. Cliff is a Welsh; he is a very friendly lodger; he tries to maintain the peace.

When the play was first enacted in London, it was highly applauded. After the play, Osborne and others who used harshness of realism on stage began to be called ‘angry young men.’

Ready Reference Treatise: Look Back In Anger
Copyright
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Plot Overview
Act One
Act Two
Act Three
Chapter Three: Characters
Chapter Four: Compete Summary
Act One
Act Two
Act Three
Chapter Five: Critical Analysis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Nov 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310279379

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Look Back In Anger

Copyright

Ready Reference Treatise: Look Back In Anger

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2014 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: Introduction

Look Back In Anger by John Osborne is a very successful play. The play revolves around a love triangle.

Jimmy Porter is an educated and intelligent young man of working class; he is highly dissatisfied. Alison is his wife; she is from upper middle class, but she is quite impassive.

Helena Charles is the best friend of Alison; she is a haughty character. Cliff is a Welsh; he is a very friendly lodger; he tries to maintain the peace.

When the play was first enacted in London, it was highly applauded. After the play, Osborne and others who used harshness of realism on stage began to be called ‘angry young men.’

Osborne and the playwrights like him were just opposite to the more escapist theatre of the earlier generation.

It is often argued that Look Back In Anger is an autobiographical play that is based on the playwright’s unhappy marriage to film actress Pamela Lane. The author and his wife had their cramped life in their small house in Derby.

It is said that Osborne wanted to pursue his career in drama and theatre but his wife was more materialistic. She never took her husband seriously and even cuckolded him with a dentist in the area.

Osborne was also very much affected by the death of his father, Thomas.

When the play was first performed, Victorian England was in it is transition stage, moving towards modern 20th century. The play through its characters presents a very effective picture of British life during that period.

Look Back In Anger is definitely a highly significant piece of literature in the British canon.

Chapter Two: Plot Overview

Act One

It is a dismal Sunday afternoon. The opening scene of the first act is set in the cramped attic of Jimmy and Alison in the Midlands.

Jimmy and Cliff are sitting there. They are reading Sunday papers. They are also reading the radical weekly. Seeing an advertisement "price nine pence, obtainable at any bookstall’ Jimmy takes the paper from Cliff. The ad refers to the New Statesman.

Alison is busy doing ironing inside the house. While Jimmy and Cliff are involved in the expository dialogue, Alison half listens to them.

The very first scene of the play reveals a fact that Jimmy and Alison are social apart, there is a huge gap. Alison is from upper middle class family. Jimmy comes from working class.

It was very difficult for Jimmy to win Alison’s hand in marriage. He had to face he