View of LOOKBACK IN ANGER: A PLAY OF FRUSTRATION AND DISCONTENTMENT

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ACCENT JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS ECOLOGY & ENGINEERING

Peer Reviewed and Refereed Journal ISSN: 2456-1037 IMPACT FACTOR: 2.104 (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL) Vol. 04, Issue 02,February 2019 Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE

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LOOKBACK IN ANGER: A PLAY OF FRUSTRATION AND DISCONTENTMENT Dr. Suman Mohan

Associate Professor of English, Pt. D.D.U. Govt. Degree College, Palahipatti, Varanasi, U.P.

Abstract- In fifties, the contemporary industrial society of Britain was divided among itself. The impact of World War on Britain was very extensive and deep. The outcry was the part of the intellectual climate of the 1950s. There was a stir in the atmosphere. Several new dramatists had their first plays performance in the second half of the 1950s. Beckett, Osborne, Arden, Pinter etc. differed widely in the content of their plays and in the techniques they used. Like other modern dramatists, Osborne also concentrated on the conflicts and sufferings involved in the family life. “Look Back in Anger” was a new voice in the theatre as well as in British Drama.

It is a play of an angry young man, Jimmy Porter who wants his wife, Alison and his surroundings feel the same pains he feels or has already felt. He has hatred towards women, middle-class people and whatever is happening in the political field. This paper is an attempt to show that this play is not only the expression of perplexities, anger and frustration, but it expresses the vent of these emotions through various ways making others also unhappy.

Anger, frustration and discontentment used in the play are for outpouring on others repeatedly. There is needed to feel the „feel‟ of the protagonist.

Keywords: Feel, anger, pains, frustration, suffering.

1 RESEARCH PAPER

Modern English drama began in the nineties of the last century under the impact of Norwegian dramatist Ibsen. The establishment of small independent theatres opened a new chapter of significant possibilities and responsibilities in the history of modern drama. Britain could never be the same after the horrible experience of the First World War. Social life was overshadowed by the aftermath of the war. The main source of the frustration, ill temperament was the lack of employment for the educated youth, limited opportunities for social mobility, prevailing industrial unrest. The frustration and dilemma of the youngsters generated by betrayal of the British society was a vital aspect of the situation. The social changes were reflected most clearly in the literature and art of the period.

“The horror of the Second World War and the atrocities committed on man by man had shaken the faith and almost destroyed the hope of thinking and feeling individuals. Shock and disgust were felt at the inhumanity of man which would have been enough to make any sensitive individual malcontent outsider, profoundly alienated from man and human nature”.(1) The massive loss of life and material was enough to shake a nation which had been generally prosperous.

John Osborne (1929-1994), The English dramatist was an autobiographical playwright. He interpreted his own concerns, desires and experiences in his plays. His play “Look Back in Anger” has been called as autobiography which was produced in May 1956 and first performed in Britain at the Royal Court Theatre on 8^th May 1956. It is an attack also on the condition of Britain in the fifties. Jimmy Porter, the protagonist in “Look Back in Anger” is a product of the time and is class conscious who hates superior classes. He laments the condition of the society he is forced to endure and live in. He is fed up of dullness and boring sameness He yearns for something new at each dawn. Jimmy is the mouthpiece of a new generation and wants to do something and to achieve something. The very opening speech of Jimmy expresses his mental agitation:

“Why do I do this every Sunday?

Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week‟s, different book-same reviews.” (ActI, P. 10)

The anger of Jimmy Porter is limitless and the suppressed frustration that he feels is manifested in several ways.

He seems to feel that it is the world that is wrong while he himself is perhaps the only right person. It is, therefore, with trepidation that we watch the development of his character, as the play unfolds and he

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2 targets anyone and everyone who crosses his path. Even his wife and near and dear ones are not spare the lashing of his tongue. The term „Angry Young Man‟ was thus coined for Jimmy Porter, a man- representative of his time is frustrated, depressed and thus angry with the world.

He realizes well enough that since he belongs to the working class or the so called lower-middle order. It is impossible for him to make any headway in the society that he lives in. Even though he is a graduate, he realizes that in the chaotic condition of society he can‟t break through the barrier set up before. The resultant frustration translates itself into anger, which must be given vent to.

Jimmy Porter is bitterly critical of each and everything that he comes across.

He attacks vehemently and expresses his anger on the objects surround him. Viz.

Alison, Cliff, Helena, H-bomb, conservative members of Parliament etc. Anger and frustration colour his own married life. He wants to be responded by his wife, Alison.

She is helpless because if she answers him, this may again make him angry. So he seems to be dissatisfied:

Alison says: All I want is a little peace.

Jimmy: Peace! God! She wants peace!

My heart is so full, I feel ill and she wants peace! I rage, and shout my head

off, and everyone thinks „poor chap‟ or

„what an objectionable young man‟!

Jimmy is enraged by the lack of imaginative response he meets everywhere.

When he attacks Prime Minister, he actually attacks the British ruling class.

Jimmy doesn‟t keep his mother-in-law away from his rage, which symbolises values, snobberies and prejudices of the enemy class. He attacks behaviour of women. He says:

“They all sit around feeling very spiritual, with their mental hands on each other‟s knees, discussing sex if it were the Art of Fugue...” (Act II, P.49) Jimmy had watched his father‟s death.

Instead of letting time heal the wound that he had occurred in his childhood, he feels that the torture inflicted by him upon his wife would teach her to feel the same experience that he had. He convinces his wife to conceive and then lose her child so that she may come to realise and

understand the agony of Jimmy. This may compel her to face reality and feel the pain and suffering that Jimmy had gone through. At the end of the play, when Alison is suffering with acute pain, Jimmy‟s wish comes true. But now that Alison has suffered the pain of loss, Jimmy feels compassion for her. When Alison collapses at Jimmy‟s feet, he melts and says:

“Don‟t please don‟t….I can‟t – you‟re all right now…we‟ll be together in our bear‟s cave and our squirrel‟s drey, and we‟ll live on honey….”

However, no one has right to let another undergo the similar kind of agony he has gone through just in order to make him/her realize the futility of existence. In the words of Armstrong, “they are both defeated by an incompatibility that goes too deep to be cured by sexual harmony.”(2)

Jimmy feels anger for the injustices in the unchanging society and also completely dissatisfied with the present scenario. And thus, social frustration in taken out on personal relationship.

According to Trussler,

“The piece is really much more about the impotent anger induced by such an intangible yet irreparable personal loss than it is about the objective anger....”(3)

Jimmy Porter has become habituated to live in the world of depression and anger. It is not only nostalgia that is the cause of his anger and depression. Alison tells Jimmy that she is going to church with Helena, suddenly he bursts out in anger. Then Helena says:

“She simply said that she‟s going to church with me. I don‟t see why that calls for this incredible outburst.”

(Actll, SC.l, P.54)

Therefore, it can be said that Jimmy has made his tendency to live in depression and sufferings. He is not very much clear for his expectations from Alison anywhere in the play. But he wants his imaginative desires to be fulfilled and thus creates such atmosphere in his home.

Many critics agree that Jimmy Porter is an angry young man, but nobody knows the real cause of his anger. Different critics have given different reasons for it.

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3 Jimmy‟s anger is due to class consciousness. He always keeps in his mind his wife‟s upper middle class origin &

he always rails against her relatives, specially her parents. Of course, he is sentimental; he looks back in the past with despair, a sense of emotional loss. But his frustration results in attacks on his wife.

The game of bears and squirrels is also a sort of emotional loss, pleasures of youth which both of them have missed. This is nothing but their personal loss.

There are autobiographical elements in the play, “Look Back in Anger.”

The situation of drama and the relationship of the married life of Osborne and the actress Pamela Lane. Like Alison, Pamela was pregnant and had an abortion and she left Osborne. “While her Parents disapproved.... It too has autobiographical justification, since Osborne and his wife lived with Anthony Creighton (who collaborated on Osborne‟s early play) in his flat. These autobiographical elements helped to identify Osborne with his protagonist, and the catch-phrase of „angry young man‟ was coined to describe both.”

However, we can say that the play has its universal appeal. John Osborne‟s dramatic art is noted in his language of passion and anger, which has been used in the play for outpouring on others repeatedly. Major roles of soliloquy, monologues, images etc. are wonderfully interwoven for expression of frustration, anger, depression and discontentment.

REFERENCES

1. Gomez, Christine: “The Alienated Figure in Drama” from Shakespeare to Pinter, Reliance Publishing House, New Delhi, 1991. P.66, 2. Armstrong, William A.: “Experimental

Drama,” London, 1963, P.153.

3. Trussler: “The Plays of John Osborne,”

Panther Books Ltd., London, 1971, P.40.

4. Inner, Christopher: „John Osborne (1929- 1994), the rhetoric of social alienation‟ in

“Modern British Drama” 1890-1990, Cambridge University Press, 1992, P.99.

5. Osborne, John: “Look Back In Anger”.