Look Back in Anger

Look Back In Anger

‘How when Jimmy is so objectionable, does Osborne maintain our sympathy for him?’

The play first opened in 1956 and it was hailed by Kenneth Tynar from the Observer as ‘totally original play of a new generation’. The Independent’s Arnold Wesker in 1994 wrote ‘Osborne opened the doors of theatres for all the succeeding generations of writers.’ Osborne in this play did something that had never been done, the way he demonstrated the ‘kitchen-sink’ dramatists as their style of domestic realism became to be known, sought to convey the language of everyday speech and to shock. Jimmy is typical of the new kind of protagonist of these dramas.

When the play opens, we first meet this ‘angry, young man’ Jimmy, who amongst other things is described as having ‘freebooting cruelty’. The abuse he dishes out to his fellows is quite outrageous; he calls Cliff his best friend as ‘ignorant’ and a ‘peasant’, describing him as a ‘sloppy, irritating bastard’. He insults his wife, labelling her as ‘sycophantic’, ‘phlegmatic’ and ‘pusillanimous’. He also describes her as ‘clumsy’ and one wonders whether he even loves her. No wonder his wife admits to her father that [Jimmy] hates all of them.

The emotional abuse he puts Alison through is unbearable, trying to destroy her self-confidence at every turn, and wishing her to ‘have a child and it should die’ so she can experience unbearable suffering. He also ………. Helena (Alison’s best friend) the very day he realises Alison has left. It is difficult to have any sympathy for a man like that. His in-laws do not escape the abuse either and he refers to them as ‘militant’, ‘arrogant’ and ‘full of malice’. We have reports of him describing his mother as ‘an over-fed, over privileged old bitch’. Even Nigel, who is a budding politician, is referred to as ‘vague’, seeking ‘sanctuary in his own stupidity’.

He refers to all women apart from his Madeline as ‘butchers’, bleeding men ‘to death’. He actually thanks God that there are few women surgeons, because they haven’t got what it takes.

He is a loud-mouth and often suggests that he thinks himself better than everybody saying he is ‘…the only one who knows how to treat a paper…in this house’. He professes to be ‘sick of doing things for people’ as if everyone is lost without him.

We see his hypocrisy by the way he constantly mocks Alison for her education, during the play, but he went to a Grammar School and University just like Billy Liar and for a working class background which both of them came from. Scholarship in the late 1950’s was very difficult to achieve which means that Jimmy was highly educated and knowledgeable. He constantly makes comparisons to highly educated people such as Emily Bronte and Webster and wants to listen to Vaughn Williams who was a famous English composer of symphonies and chamber music. He also mocks the parents’ class but he in addition had ‘posh relatives from his mother’s side.’

Despite all the above, we can not help but sympathise with Jimmy because as a ten year old he watches his father die, a little every day for twelve months, no wonder he lashes out. Good people are supposed to do good things but his father suffered in the war in Spain because ‘certain god-fearing gentlemen…had made such a mess of him.’ From that tender age even love, care and kindness seems to be missing in his family. (When the going is good then its fine but when things don’t work out then they become ‘embarrassed’ and ‘irritated’.) Even his mother (who generally stands for love and long-suffering) who married a man not of the same class, and not because of love but ‘provided that they were the smart and fashionable ones’, so when his father got into trouble all she could think of was why she had ‘allied herself to a man who seemed to be in the wrong side in all things’. She didn’t care about the dying man; no one did apart from Jimmy. Why should someone of that gentle age go through that? It just scars you for life. By the time his father died, he had toughened up and become ‘a veteran’ in not showing pain.

No one seems to understand him even his wife does not most of the time. He thinks people are out to get him and he might be right even the Colonel admits they (and his wife) did not treat him fairly. It was ‘rather horrifying’ not necessary ‘to have all those inquiries, private detectives, accusations’ and Jimmy ‘must have had a certain amount of right on his side.’ He wants his wife to side with him asking her whether it did not bother her ‘what people do to’ him. He thinks he is given ‘just everything’ so a little support from her will be merited.

He is not to able to communicate his feelings properly he ‘rages’ and ‘shouts his head off’ and that causes people to think he is ‘an objectionable young man’ or pity him by calling him ‘poor chap’. All that shouting puts his wife off talking to him for fear of causing more anger. ‘All [she] wants is a little peace.’ Communication therefore is virtually impossible unless through make believe animals. She thinks ‘perhaps only another woman could understand us.’ The one time he expressly communicates with his ‘need’ for her to ‘come with’ him to London when Hugh’s mum had a bad stroke. She walks away from him choosing Helena. He does not comprehend how Alison could desert him so he looks ‘about him unbelievingly’ and ‘throws the teddy downstage’ and ‘burying his face in the covers of the bed' like a child who is still craving for love and attention.

His wife betrays him writing and receiving letters from her family and even planning to leave him at the time when he needed her most after the stroke of Mrs Tanner. Her father later draws her attention to the fact that ‘it might have been better, if [you] hadn’t written letter to us’. He does not understand the concept of love because it is been missing in his life for such a long time so that his wife doesn’t even see the love in the marriage, she sees it as ‘…being on trail every day and night…’ referring to him as ‘…a spiritual barbarian (who) throws down the gauntlet’ at her. He on the other hand thinks he has ‘…given (her) just everything…’

He has experienced so much pain and misery which causes him to be perpetually angry such as experiencing his father’s death and Mrs Tanner’s dying also and the fact that he was alone ‘watching someone he loved dearly going through the sordid process of dying…’ Just to come here and find his wife had deserted him leaving a letter to explain her abandonment. Cliff can’t even be there for him, when he saw Jimmy ‘he belted the other way and pretended not to see (him).’ That sympathy is heightened when everyone it seems has left him, he can’t take it anymore and he asks ‘What’s the matter with everybody?’ It is very sad when it finally sinks in that his wife has him he lashed out calling her all sorts of names but he can not help the ‘…muffled cry of despair that escapes him…’ which then causes Helena to take advantage of him and probably wield emotional power over him. In the end he gets lumbered with her saying ‘with all his faults, being a sloppy, irritating bastard.’ Cliff is worth ‘half a dozen of Helena’s to him.’ When Cliff leaves him, his one true friend, the pain is so evident he can’t help but comment that… ‘(he) seems to spend (his) life saying goodbye.’

He is always the last to know even things concerning him; Alison’s pregnancy, everyone seemed to know, both Cliff and Helena and even his father in law knew. He had to find out from Helena not from his wife, no wonder the reaction. All the pain causes him to be so foul-mouthed. When Cliff was leaving, he apparently informed Helena the night before no wonder Jimmy says he ‘…always seem(s) to be at the end of the queue when they are passing out information.’ Perhaps is it this lack of timely information which brings out the worst in him? Whatever, it is quite sad that you are always the last to be told.

When one begins to read the play, it is easy to feel antagonistic towards Jimmy, because of his behaviour; it is a shock to the system. But as the play develops, those feelings subtly changes to sympathy because one begins to understand him better and actually see the reasoning behind his behaviour. This is what Osborne does brilliantly since no one knows when the change occurs. He portrays him as a powerful and charismatic character both on and off stage; he seems to dominate the entire play, which is how he maintains his sympathy for him because he is never out of sight or out of mind.