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Drama
Fourth year

Non- Shakespearian

Look Back In Anger
Hero and anti – Hero
The anti-hero is such a hero we do not like or admire because he has such a sense
of rebellion
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If we identified ourselves with him, we would love him, if not, we would hate him
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As an anti-hero, or folk hero, Jimmy is such a central character who does not
consider himself capable of accomplishing any goals
...
He is a man who is living day by day in a world in
which feelings and imagination responses to the others have been deadened by
convertor
...
Instead of screaming against those
with whom he has a conflict the upper classes, and with those who are responsible for
the unjust conditions in which the working classes find themselves, Jimmy pours his
anger on his wife Alison
...
He is totally affected by the hydrogen bomb, which limits the moral
imagination of the whole generation
...
For this reason, he is to be the main
message of the play, in other words, he is an image that broke up "the death mask of
loftiness"
...
He is always criticizing;
either his wife for being lazy, Helena for being a woman like other women, and even the
Establishment and Nigel himself for being part of the general system
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Although he has graduated from
a university, he works with Cliff as owner of a candy stall in an outdoor market
...
He recognizes that Alison’s lack of emotional commitment to anything is
draining him of his zest for life
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He needs to break down Alison’s neutrality
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At the age of ten, Jimmy watched his idealized father dying for the twelve months
and “I was the only one who cared”, he says “you see, I learnt at an early age what it
was to be angry- angry and helpless
...
Jimmy’s source of pain
and anger seem to come from the same source as that of John Osborne who at an early
age, watched his own father die of tuberculosis
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The play with its image of anti-hero presents a vision
that still rings true and excites all the time
...
The British theatre
exposes always a drama with a message; in other words, it was not just for
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entertainment
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Yet; it is not
the job of the dramatist to find solutions
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Look Back In Anger deals with certain period of England that is similar to
nowadays problems
...
England passed through two different eras, the first from 1950 to 1955, and the
second from 1955 to 1960
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Yet; the external policy was shaken, as many of the British colonies got
independence
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There were no longer causes to live there, the English people
were disappointed and frustrated people were against government, people began to
demonstrate against the use of power, “the nuclear power”, within Look Back In Anger,
Osborne exposes the reactions of people varying from positveness to negativeness, the
actors in the play are all the same, yet; in different degrees in silence especially the hero
Jimmy Porter, in addition to Alison, Cliff and Helena, the most positive character
...
The most passive, Helena the most positive, and Jimmy is
between both of them because he has the talent to speak and voice out of anger, yet,
he has a problem of inaction
...
Both Jimmy and Osborne are similar
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Jimmy expresses all the time his need to
talk, he is positive in such a point, at least he is trying to know the reaction of others
...
It is the complement of society that infuriate ‫يغضب‬Jimmy
...
Jimmy has slipped into
a world of sameness as illustrated by three Sundays evenings spent reading the
newspapers and even the direct replacement of Alison at the ironing board with Helena
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A critic says that Jimmy may marry Alison out of revenge as the audience does not
feel any glimpse of love between them
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His comments against the newspapers
represent his own positive attitude, still he is negative, he only uses words
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The result of being aware without doing
anything is disappointing, he is disappointed because he wants all the neutral people to
wake up, yet; this does not happen
...
Thus, we
hate him sometimes because of his ill-treatment to his wife and other times, we
sympathize with him because of silence screams, for this reason, he is lost
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He blames himself for spending
money on papers, as they do not give an authentic picture of what society likes
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Throughout the play, Jimmy accuses both Alison, and her brother of being phlegmatic,
and not used to shocks in life “they’re too delicate to deal with it, they are hypocritic”
...
She is used
by Jimmy as a means against fighting the upper class society
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She
tells Helena “I’d lived a happy uncomplicated life, and suddenly, this- this spiritual
barbarian
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Alison suffers the loss of her unborn child and she returns to Jimmy richer in the
humility and pain of living
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She could
not even reveal to him her pregnancy, at the beginning of the play except through the
letter
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Her apathy in extended to the end of the play, they have entered into their game
of “bears and squirrels”, which Alison explained earlier was a place
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As for Helena, she is the most positive character within the play, her positiveness
is presented in her attitude towards her friend Alison and how she tries to awake her
from this humiliating marriage life
...
She has an impact on Alison’s life
...


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Helena is set on the top of the pyramidical shape of awareness within the play
...
She is
not touched by Jimmy’s affair in the full sense
...
The climax of her own positiveness is presented in slapping Jimmy on his
face
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“Anger and Violence”
Jimmy As a symbol of a young angry man
Osborne throughout his play Look Back In Anger expresses the anger direct to the
British government, society and church at certain period of time 1955 to 1960 because
of the performance of the British government at that time
...
The second reason beyond
disappointment was the use of power “nuclear power”
...


Osborne and other young writers “dramatists” at that period formed a movement
called angry young men who sought to voice and articulate the anger of the young
generation against the government
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Both Osborne and Jimmy
are similar in lashing their anger against helplessness and disappointment of people,
although all what both of them could do is to write without actions (theme of inaction)
...
Jimmy
suffers because he is the only one who is aware of the status quo at that time
...
ثقة‬He is not ideal, he is
frustrated
...
Jimmy’s anger is in vain because it
is tainted with inaction, it is transformed to evil because it is mixed with the feelings of
bitterness, frustration and selfishness
...
His relation with
his wife is an example of his attack against passivity and the conflict among classes
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He all the time uses war images in
describing his marital relation
...
Jimmy turns his awareness of the passivity of people into verbal violence
against his wife, "she has not a thought in years”, he attacks her saying “All this time I
have been married to this woman", and calls her “the lady Pusillanimous”
...
His passion as angry
man leads him to wish her that she will have a child and the child will die
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He wishes that she would stand
up in tears and splash about in them and sing
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He is a man living day
to day in a world in which feelings and imaginative response to others have been
deadened by convention
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His attack against the social class conflict is presented mainly in his anger towards
his marriage to Alison
...


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Moreover; Jimmy attacks the newspapers saying that they do not express the true
life of people
...
In addition, his anger is
directed against the religious men who work for the government and not the church
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His verbal violence is the
only expression of his own anger
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The influence of Naturalism and Realism
on the play
(Kitchen Sink Drama)
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the
late 19th and 20th centuries
...
The focus is on the contemporary
subject away from the aristocratic drama
...


Those naturalistic writers were influenced by the revolution theory of Charles
Darwin
...
The movement of Kitchen Sink drama was developed in relation to
naturalistic drama
...
Often
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these dramas use the themes connected with the working class, and the workers of this
class become the heroes of these dramas
...
Their political views were initially labeled as radical
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As a naturalistic drama, Look Back In Anger expresses Darwinian direction of
revolution in many aspects
...
The speech of characters conveys their own rhythms related to their
own class distinction, Cliff is humble, Colonel Redfern is calm and reflective, Alison is
proper and noncommittal
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Jimmy is extremely articulate and self confident
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His language is polite,
though one suspects it would be a great deal more impolite if theatre censorship had
not been in effect
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The furniture is simple and rather old; a double bed,
dressing table, book shelves, chest of drawers, dining table and three chairs
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Thirdly; the focus of Look Back In Anger is on the working class with their
dominant struggle against the rich class which is completely naturalistic
...
He hates the rich people even if they belong to him or his wife
...
He uses
war imagery to convey his struggle against his wife as a representative of a higher class
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He attacks Nigel,
Alison’s brother accusing him of being stupid and insensitive, although he becomes one
of the Parliamentary members
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The only person for whom Jimmy’s love is apparent is Hugh’s working class
mother
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Fourthly; the play is full of the themes attached to the real setting and
surrounding like the anger, frustration resulted from the defeat of the British troops by
the Egyptians in 1956 and the use of the nuclear power
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...
و نقده ضد الجرائد و الكنيسة فى 3 أسطر‬anger ‫وأتكلن عن‬

Thus the play belongs to the naturalistic Kitchen Sink drama in language, setting,
themes and the hero
...

Thus, the young generation lost trust in the old generation
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To sum up the gap between parents and children could be seen
through
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The young generation is anti-parent or antiChristian and anti-tradition
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The
immigration from the common wealth and the wide spread effect on the national TV;
participate in making the gap between both the young and the old
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He is Alison’s father; he is a retired army officer who served in India from 1913
to 1947
...
He represents the
values of beliefs of another period a time of British Empire
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His world ended with the
independence of India
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He becomes amazed on seeing Jimmy
exclaiming how Alison’s mother refuses him from the very beginning
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Although
he was educated at a white tile university, a reference to the real power and
opportunities were reserved for the children of the establishment, those born to
privilege
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Critic Harold Ferrar describes him as "a beautiful loser", another critic says
“a lovable monster with the gift of the gap and the talent for resentment”
...
He
cannot break through her “cool”, her unwillingness to feel deeply even during sexual
intercourse with her husband
...
He wants to force her to feel and to
have vital life
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He says she is not real because she did not suffer real pain and degradation
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Jimmy has hated Helena for the same
reason he hated Alison, namely her social class and “proper”, “upbringing”
...
Jimmy is anxious to give a great deal and is deeply angry because
no one seems interested enough to take from him, including his wife
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Jimmy porter feels angry not like colonel Redfern, his anger is directed at those he
loves because they refuse to have strong feelings, at a society that did not fulfill
promises of opportunity
...
When he was ten
years old he watched his idealist father dying for a year from wounds received fighting
for democracy in the Spanish civil war, his father talking foe hours “pouring out all that
was left of his life to one bewildered little boy”
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And I can never forget it”
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2- The Alienation “The Marital problem”
The new generation of 1956, has certain ethical and moral views which make
critics call those young people anti-Christian, or anti-traditional
...
There was scene of alienation prevailing at that time in human relations
concerning the marriage relation between both Alison and Jimmy
...

Alison is an example of such a wife to whom Jimmy directs his own attack Jimmy’s
first attack on Alison comes barely a minute into the play when he says “she has not
a thought in years” shortly after, he says “all this time I have been married to this
woman, this monument of non-attachment” and calls her “the lady pusillanimous”
...
Jimmy says “do you know I
have never known the great pleasure of love making when I didn’t desire it myself
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He wants to awaken her to life, with its pain
...
He
says "if only I could watch you face that
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He later says he wants to watch her grovel in the
mud
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Moreover, Jimmy recognizes that Alison’s lack of emotional commitment to any
thing is draining him of his own zest ‫ حماس‬for life
...
He needs to break down Alison’s neutrality
...
She describes her life with Jimmy “I’d lived
a happy uncomplicated life and suddenly, this spiritual barbarian throws down the
gauntlet at me
...

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Alison does suffer the loss of her unborn child and she does return to Jimmy
richer in the humility and pain of living- at the end of the play they have entered into
their game of “bears and squirrels, when Alison explained earlier place where we
could become little furry creatures with little brains”
...


Marriage
‫ هكتب مقدمة فيها‬
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Frustration
Anger
Naturalistic drama
Kitchen Sink drama
Jimmy’s anger against his wife


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و الزم أذكر‬

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S TA A
F



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