Look Back in Anger

Look Back in Anger (1956) by John Osborne is the play that launched the 'Angry Young Men' movement in British theatre. Set entirely in a cramped Midlands attic flat, it dramatises the explosive frustrations of Jimmy Porter, a university-educated young man from a working-class background who rages against the complacency, class snobbery and emotional deadness of post-war British society.

Jimmy lives with his wife Alison, daughter of a retired colonel, and their friend Cliff Lewis. The marriage is a battleground: Jimmy's relentless verbal attacks on Alison, her family and the English upper-middle class are both a cry for genuine feeling and a form of emotional cruelty. The arrival of Alison's friend Helena Charles precipitates a crisis: Alison leaves, Helena takes her place, and eventually Alison returns, having lost her baby, to a fragile reconciliation with Jimmy.

For the WAEC SSCE examination, this is a set text for Non-African Drama. Students are expected to analyse Jimmy as an anti-hero, the play's treatment of class, gender and post-war disillusion, Osborne's naturalistic technique and the significance of the 'bears and squirrels' game as a refuge from reality.