PAPER 1

 

 

Subject: TEATRO INGLÉS S. XIX Y XX

Code: 14227 group: B

NPA: CL46706  Mª JOSEFA GÓMEZ GARCÍA

 

 

 

TOPIC

Comparison and contrast between the two main characters of the plays LOOK BACK IN UNGER, (Jimmy Porter), and THE ENTERTAINER (Archie Rice) from John Osborne. 

 

 

 

After reading both plays I found out lots of resemblance in between Jimmy Porter, the “angry young man” of the play Look back in anger and Archie Rice the not less offensive man of The entertainer. 

Both of them live in the post-war period after the II World war. A difficult  time in Britain, where there was almost impossible for them to meet their expectations with the dun reality around them.  Neither of them can’t stand the social codes of the “petit bourgeois”, which happen to be the successful ones at the time

 

They share lots of things in common; they are a kind of anti-hero, been not good for nothing but to provoke others when they talk. Jimmy Porter is the sharper and more offensive of the two, every time he opens his mouth is to arouse pain and distress to the person he is talking to, or either to rage against something.

Archie Rice also likes to stir others when he talks, but I think that because he is an older man, he is a bit weary through experience in life and has become less offensive plus he takes live with a greater sense of humour.

 

The two of them seem to be lost in time, they don’t belong to a particular social class. Jimmy  Porter has studied at the university but he doesn’t take any advantage from it since he runs a sweet stall. Archie Rice left the public school in London and he lives in the variety-theatre world. Both are intelligent and should be capable of succeeding but none of them succeeds in anything. They just seem to waste their energies fighting enemies that nobody else but themselves can see.  

This is what Helena says about Jimmy in the play: “There’s no place for people like that any longer-in sex, politics, or anything. That’s way he is so futile. Sometimes, when I listen to him, I feel he thinks he’s still in the middle of the French Revolution. And that’s where he’s ought to be, of course. He doesn’t know where he’s, or where he’s going. He’ll never do anything, he’ll never amount to anything.”

In the other hand we’ve got Archie Rice who also lives out of his time, having borne too late for the Music hall. He is in his fifties, it’s year 1956 and the Music Hall had it’s heyday at the beginning of the 20th century. He just accumulates debts from running lousy shows with lots of women half nude. Lets now see how Osborne describes Archie in the stage directions: “…Landladies adore and cosset him because he is so friendly, and obviously such a gentleman. Some of his fellow artists even call him “Professor” occasionally, as they might call a retired Captain “Colonel”. He smiles kindly at this simplicity, knowing himself to belong to no class and plays the part as well as he knows how…”

 

They just differ in age and in the way they live. Jimmy’s is much younger, about twenty-five and he’s life seems to be more claustrophobic. Always indoors. He hardly speaks to anybody outside his flat mates. Perhaps that’s way he is so caustic with them and feels so trapped. Whereas Archie is in his fifties, he lives open to the world, at least while he’s on the stage. He talks to the audience. Because his job is to entertain he can’t be so hard with the public, however in his shows he has some monologues that are quiet ironical and taunting. Out of the stage he uses some of the techniques from stage, like throwing out questions as if he wouldn’t care of what he is asking about. Although he can be pretty hard with the close ones.    

 

 

Somehow I’ve got the feeling that the two characters could be an alter ego of Osborne at the time of writing the plays. After all he also lived in the same dull period of the post-war. Play writing was going trough an almost dead time. They all went through the same difficult period. The journalists used to refer to Osborne with the term “angry young man” just as they did with Jimmy Porter.Term that he shared with other writers of the 50’s, which expressed dissatisfaction with the society and revolted against the prevailing codes like class distinction, and “good taste”. He differs from these two characters in that he managed to succeed. Since with only twenty years he could see Look back in anger being played on stage with the ending acclamation of the audience.