Student: José Martínez Hernández e-mail: jomarhe5@alumni.uv.es
English Philology. First cicle, first
course.
English
Theatre XIX & XX Centuries . Group B.
Paper
Author:
John Osborne Title: Look back in anger (
a play in three acts ) Faber
Editions, 1969 ( first edition 1957 )
24, Russell Sq
Dramatis
Personae:
Jimmy
Porter
The name is
probably not a coincidence.
The very
main character, well described, is a tall, thin, 25 years-old man. He wears a
worn tweed jackets and flannels. He puffes his head off smoking a pipe. That looks maybe a bit
intellectual. He´s at the same time caring and a
sword-word cruel and horrible man. Ruthless sincerity, rude sometimes, mentally
cruel even; reads a lot.
A real miserable guts. He can be really
disgusting. Probably he is a bit of a misogynist who thinks love is nothing but
a entangled mess.
He doesn´t make many friends because of his careless
sincerity.
Jimmy seems
to be an intelligent man that has managed to make a mess out of his life, ending
in a sweet stall, when he could do much better than that. On the other hand, he
seems to enjoy that job, what can not be said for most of the population. Maybe
the author made a remark about how sometimes it is terribly easy to be happy
and instead of that we prefer the opposite, just to keep our nose up.
Jimmy is an
odd ball, the kind of guy that likes to rub it in. But he cares about his
friends. How comes that being so honest could he invite himself to rich people´s houses for dinner ?
Jimmy does
not like living " the American Age ". He is such a guy that likes
Webster even though Webster dislikes him.
Jimmy could
easily feel jealous, but he does not, probably because he believes in
friendship or as well because he doesn´t have a
problem with that particular issue, as he does with other things.
Alison
Jimmy´s
wife. From a well off family . She had a good life ( at least, until she met
Jimmy, ). Does not like facing the music, perhaps that is why she does not want
to tell Jimmy about the baby when she gets pregnant. Maybe she has a deep
natural woman fear about that, because she is prepared to put up with whatever
takes to live with Jimmy; but with the baby, things are pretty different.
Cliff,
Jimmy´s
friend. Same age as Jimmy´s. Short, well built, wears
new trousers, but very creased ( He is mr nice guy,
he is a happy soul, very casual, easy-does-it character), welshman
as well, they are counterpoints to each other, although both of them are
working class, Cliff speaks often a bit of slang. Suffers a transformation
during the play as he gets angry, because Alison leaves.
He is not a
precisely a university teacher, but he is a good reader, too. Perhaps he is a
capable man that didn´t achieved much because of his
social class. Maybe that is way is capable of a giving a proper speech that
coming from him is a tiny bit odd.
Friend of
Alison, influences her. Jimmy´s enemy, first. Later,
his lover.
Colonel Redfern
Alison´s
Father. In spate of the fact that he does not like Jimmy, he is honest enough
to recognise that maybe they, most af it all his
wife, should be as well blamed for the bad relationship with Jimmy.
The plot:
The main
Character, Jimmy lives in a flat with his wife and his best friend, Cliff.
Jimmy is a very difficult guy to deal with,
as a consequence
of having had to see his father dying in suffer from wounds caused in the Spanish
civil war. His wife, Alison, belongs to a well-off family that does not like
Jimmy, and the feeling is reciprocal. Jimmy uses to give a hard time to Alison,
and when she gets pregnant, instead of telling him, she ( influenced and "
helped " by her friend Helena ) flees back to her family. Then Helena, in
a turning point of the plot, takes - for a while - Alison´s
place in all senses, but later on starts to think ( or so she says ) that that
one it is not her place. Alison returns after losing the baby,
The action
happens in the present ( 1956 ), in Springtime, in a unique space, indoors, in
a flat in a large town in the
There are
three acts, the first with only one scene, and the other two with two scenes.
The
temporary references are simple. Just mentioned the past in the speech of
characters, there are not real flashbacks as such, and as for the future, the
time line is pretty straightforward ( two weeks later and several months later
), although it´s only as the play comes nearer to the
end that you start to understand.
There is a
reference to raining ( " she wears a rain coat " ) that adds emphasis
to her miserable condition.
The language
use by the author is a first class one, although he uses the literary asset of
making characters speak in some other way ( local slang, for instance ).
An
enjoyable, good quality play, not only drama but a lot of fun. Remarkable use
of the language. Rather straightforward, with a plot as solid as concrete,
although the author writes about life, love, friendships and feelings in their
most abstract side.
Personal
opinion.
They play
reflects a lot of the uses and manners. References to