Victoria Palacios Merino
Group A
“ Look Back in
Anger”
“ Look Back in Anger” is a play in three acts and written
by John Osborne (ed. Faber and Faber, London, 1957)
The plot of Look Back in anger takes us to an
English apartment where Jimmy Porter, his wife and Cliff live. Cliff is a
friend of the couple. Jimmy shows a deep contempt to both. , although he needs
and loves them, but in his way. He is always causing fights between all of
them, in which ones, Cliff usually acts easing up the situation, and Alison is attacked by
his sweet character.
The action has two main
aspects: first, Alison’s pregnancy, who tries to hide to her husband, and the
arrival of Helena, a friend of Alison and enemy of Jimmy. The violence’s
situations that they live at home originated by Helena’s arrival makes her to
persuade Alison to abandon Jimmy, because she thinks it would be good for her
baby. When she abandons him, and beyond the last
scene of vexation of Jimmy to Helena, they kisses with passion and they starts
connivance. The last
act is a reflex of the first one, in which Helena substitutes the role of
Alison. However, she comes back after having the baby she was waiting for.
After the second abandon of Jimmy, this time it is done by Helena, he feels
soft cause of the state of misery his wife has arrived.
The play ends with Jimmy
and Alison commiserating of their situation but in certain way there are
comforted by the fact of sharing it.
Jimmy is the character who causes more extreme reactions
because his continuously bad character and his insults, as we can see in the
next examples given: ‘Well you are an ignorant’, ‘Stupid bitch’
and ‘You’re so bloody feeble’. The reaction,
in the face of him, is a mixture of aversion of his bad character, and of
comprehension of being an unsuccessful man in his life’s illusion. The fact of having survived the
Second World War affects also his character. The other character who has a
strong character is Helena, who refuses Jimmy’s acts about Alison and Cliff.
However, after seeing she is in love with Jimmy, her character falls down and
it is seemed to Alison’s character. Alison and Cliff, who are weaker than the
others, tolerates Jimmy moved by some kind of compassion to him.
The language of the characters is a colloquial language
as we have seen before in the case of Jimmy. He uses an rude and impolite
language.
In the play there is only one space: characters’
apartment, closed and urban, and a bit claustrophobic because it is made up of
one room. Temporally, the play lapses
in a few months, starting in spring.
Front the point of structural view, the division in three
acts is Aristotelian, which allows the author realize one of the most
interesting aspects of the play: the reflection of the first act in the third
one across the characters Alison and Helena.
To sum up, the play collects lots of aspects which gets
to make it an interesting play: the bold treatment of the characters, who are
well treated and they are likely.