Character's mind in John Osborne's "Look back in anger" and Arnold Wesker's "The kitchen"

This essay is trying to establish a comparison between the two plays: “Look back in anger”, by John Osborne, and “The Kitchen”, by Arnold Wesker. For this purpose, I’ll focus on the study of the characters, that is to say, the aspects related to their personality, behaviour, the way they think, etc., in short, their most internal features. Share they a series of features? Which ones?, At which aspects do they differ? These matters are interesting, as the main characters of a play, develop the most important part in the task of giving a global sense to it. Therefore, I’ll try to briefly analyse the behaviour, feelings, moral convictions  and attitude to the world and to the society that they show throughout the plays.

The name of the main character in John Osbornes’s ‘Look back in anger’ is Jimmy. He is an intellectual young man, with university training, living in a world that doesn’t seem to be made to his measure.
On the other hand, we have Peter, the main character in Arnold Wesker’s ‘The kitchen’. He is also a young man. He is twenty two years old and he looks like he were against the world too, or maybe the world against him.
Jimmy has his own shop that hardly makes him earn a little money. In addition, he really hates it. Peter works in a large restaurant as a cook, and this hectic job makes him get so stressed.
As I said before, both of them seem to not fit in, however, each one shows that in a different way. Certainly, both men are violent . Jimmy often fights with his friend Cliff, who lives with him, they hit each other, but after all, they do that as though they were just joking. Actually, Jimmy usually resorts to the verbal violence more often than not. Peter, on his part, is a very troubled man, he is almost always quarrelling with his workmates, and sometimes they even come to blows.

JIMMY: (capable of anything now). I’ve got every right. That old bitch should be dead! […] I said she’s an old bitch, and should be dead! What’s the matter with you? […]    (Look back in Anger, p. 53)

PETER: What you call me? What was it? Say it again. [He screams at her.] SAY IT AGAIN! […]
Suddenly he wheels round and in a frenzy searches for something violent to do. […] (The kitchen, p. 67)

It might be desirable to mention a peculiarity that establishes a similitude between the two main characters we are talking about, is a fact of their past that could be significant in the formation of their personality: Jimmy knows the suffering of seeing a father die on his deathbed, and Peter lost his parents, as they were killed in the war.
The direct cause of the anger of the character appears clearly in Osborne’s play. The thing that drives Jimmy up the wall is the passivity in people’s attitude, specially in his wife, Alison. He hates her indifference, her lack of ambitions and interest about anything, her comfort and the weakness of her mind. He calls her pusillanimous. He is a rebel, a misunderstood, and, paradoxically, he faces up to this fact with a sarcastic attitude, as he was resigned, as though there is no person in the world who can understand him,  nobody to share his dreams and illusions. A characteristic feature of Jimmy are his monologues , most of them become something like political speeches. Usually he starts to talk longer and longer, and he doesn’t care about if somebody is listening to him.

JIMMY: [...] No one can raise themselves out of their delicious sloth. [...] Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. [...] Oh, brother, it’s such a long time since I was with anyone who got enthusiastic about anything.   (Look back in anger, p. 15)

Peter is a peculiar guy too. He is in the habit of “talking to people into their ear as though he were telling them a secret. It is a nervous movement. A strong characteristic of Peter is his laugh. It is a forced laugh, pronounced ‘Hya hya hya’ […] He turns this laugh into one of surprise or mockery, derision or simple merriment. […] “   (The kitchen, p. 11)
With this “maniacal tone”, Peter reminds us Jimmy again. The things that seem to make Peter get angry are, on the one hand, the coming and going of his job, and on the other, the fact that Monique, his “girlfriend” seems not to be decided to tell her husband she has a relation with Peter. He is in love with her, and he feels like he were tied to their relationship, in spite of the fact that they are always quarrelling.
Jimmy is married with Alison, but unlike Peter, he is more independent, and not jealous, maybe because he is a progressive and liberal man, or maybe because he doesn’t really love her.

PETER: Listen, Monique, I love you. Please listen to me that I love you. You said you love me but you don’t say to your husband this thing.   (The kitchen, p. 64)
JIMMY: [...] We’ll be together in our bear’s cave, and our squirrel’s drey, and we’ll live on honey, and nuts-lots and lots of nuts. And we’ll sing songs about ourselves […]   (Look back in anger, p. 96)

So far in this assignment, and in order to finish, we can affirm  that the two main characters of these plays share the figure of the resentful, misunderstood man. That implies a contextual situation. Both plays are based on the period of the end of the Second World War and 1960. The social context plays an important part in the features of characters, therefore, as far as they are in disagreement with certain things, they contribute to the social criticism contained in the plays.

HELENA: (steadily). She’s going to church.
JIMMY: You’re doing what? Have you gone out of your mind or something? […] How feeble can you get? […] When I think of what I did, what I endured, to get you out…   (Look back in anger, p.51)

In “The Kitchen”, we find critiques related basically to labour life and capitalist world, in very Marxists terms.

DIMITRI: Knob. That perhaps I could put in. All day I would fix knobs. I tell you, in a factory a man makes a little piece till he becomes a little piece you know what I mean?   (The kitchen, p. 20)

PETER: […] It’s money. It’s all money. The world chase money so you chase money too. Money! Money! Money!   (The kitchen, p. 36)

And also we find a great metaphor about the life at this moment:
DIMITRI: Hey, Irishman, what you grumbling about this place for? Is different anywhere else? People come and people go, big excitement, big noise. [Makes noise and gesticulates.] What for? In the end who do you know? You make a friend but when you go from here – pshtt! You forget! Why you grumble about this one kitchen?