Look Back in Anger as a revolt against all that is conventional

Look Back in Anger is basically a problem play of considerable psychological insight. It represents the mood and temperament of the post-war generation, their disillusionment, frustration and rebelliousness. Jimmy Porter becomes the mouth piece of the entire generation of post-war youth in condemning the society,

institution and people. Moreover it is a play of protest against the contemporary English society as well as a revolt against all that is conventional.

Look Back in Anger shows the mood and temper of the post-war England. Just after the Second World War, the Labour Party came to power. People voted the party of power in the hope of better future. The Labour government introduced many reforms in order to build up a welfare state. Despite these reforms, the young people’s expectations were not translated into realities. The people found themselves in precisely the same situation that Jimmy Porter describes in one of the most famous speeches in the play “Look Back in Anger”. He pronounces the real condition of the people when he says “There are no good, brave causes left in the world”.

          Jimmy Porter, the protagonist of the play seems to be a self-portrait of the author himself. He shares the same socio-economic background of John Osborne. Porter hails from the working class background and he is proud of his own class. He is totally disillusioned with English social system, its religious values, its government and its idea of empire. In fact, the English society is undergoing steady degeneration. In other words, there is no brave cause to fight for. Jimmy is in short, the very embodiment of disillusionment and rebelliousness.

Jimmy’s marriage with Alison is a part of his campaign against the middle class. They loved each other. Jimmy comes from a working-class family, while his wife comes from the affluent middle class. Alison’s parents had opposed her marriage to Jimmy and Jimmy has never been able to forget this fact even though four years have passed. He keeps criticizing not only Alison but Alison’s family also. He describes Alison’s brother Nigel as that “straight-backed, chinless wonder from Sandhurst”. As for Alison herself, she is “Lady pusillanimous”.

Throughout the play we find Jimmy raging against things, persons and institutions. The ringing of Church bells annoys him because he is opposed to formal religion and its ritual. He feels very irritated with Alison when he learns that, under Helena’s influence, she is going to Church. He scoffs at the theology of Dante and at the midnight invocations to the Coptic Goddess of fertility in which the people of the Midland are indulging. Jimmy’s disillusionment has made him so cynical that he criticizes the entire female sex for being too noisy and for being blood thirsty.

Despite his university degree, Jimmy cannot settle in his life. He has been drifting. As Alison tells her father Jimmy tried his hand at many things- journalism, advertising, even vacuum cleaner for a few weeks; and he was as happy doing one

thing as another. He had at one time even organized a jazz band, and might even now start one. His occupation as a seller of sweets is simply something that we cannot understand. He is certainly thinking of leaving sweet stall, as he tells Helena, but he does not know what exactly he will do. This attitude of uncertainty and drift is again typical of the aimless youth of post-war England.

Thus the play depicts the England society in the post-war period. In this play Osborne to be disgusted with all that are conventional. Jimmy’s attitude to his wife, family, to his religion and society is a type of revolt against conventionality.