John osborne

_{( 1929-1994)}

John Osborne was the initiator of the new trend in drama. His play Look Back in Anger (1956) not only presented a typical "angry" character but also laid the foundations of the new English drama, which was later called the "New Wave Drama"

John Osborne was born in a suburb of London where he

lived with his family till the early years of the war He was educated in a boarding school in the West of England. He left school at the age of 16 and worked for a short while as a journalist. Then, quite by chance, he went on the stage. For some time he acted in different provincial theatres. In the early 50s he was invited to become a member of the

English Stage Company in London. This company later staged his play Look Back in Anger.

In 1956 John Osborne became a playwright, after that he wrote a number of plays, such as The Entertainer (1957), The World of Paul Slickey (1959), Inadmissible Evidence ( 1964) and many others. In them he satirised the foundations of the British capitalist society, its laws and traditions.

His play A Sense of Detachment (1973) tells of the tragic fate of an artist in the bourgeois world. Osborne is

known to have said once: "I don't like the society I live in. The more I live the less I like it I am sure the theatre can become a decisive weapon of our time" These words

convey the great role which the playwright ascribes to art,

to the drama in particular.

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LOOK BACK IN ANGER

Look Back in Anger reflected the life of post-war youth. Those were the people who received an education but could not find their proper place in society.

The title of the play gave the name to the whole liter­

ature of the "angry young men" The setting of the play is in the Porters' one room flat, in a large Midland town. The audience was invited to look into a plain, but entirely real world. The gas stove, the chest of drawers. Jimmy Porter sitting in an arm chair reading a paper, Alison, his wife, ironing in the middle of the room- it was an instantly recognizable scene.

The action of the play can hardly be called action for there is very little of it. Indeed, the play might well be­ and has been- called Jimmy Porter's monologue. Jimmy's speeches disclose the main idea, while the other characters are like small pieces of mosaic, that fill in the picture of Jimmy's life and make us understand the reason for his revolt against society

From the age of ten Jimmy has had enough trouble to be angry. His father took part in the war in Spain where he fought on the side of the republicans. He came back wounded and, for a year, suffered the agony of a slow death. Jimmy's mother abandoned her husband and her son. The boy was the only person who listened to his fa­ ther's stories about the war. From that time Jimmy has hated the bourgeois class his mother belonged to because she and her family were unable to understand his fat Pr's tragedy and the reason why he had gone to Spain. The girl Jimmy falls in love with also belongs to this class. In spite of the disapproval of Alison's parents they get married but he still feels lonely and discontented.

Jimmy Porter, like his creator and like so many other people, hates the established order but wants to fight his personal "class struggle" within his own family His retreat into his own inner world, however, makes him a self-pitying egoist, an idealist without a cause. Jimmy Porter raises his voice against any form of aristocratic pretence, against religion and the H-bomb, but at the same time his protest achieves nothing. Though Jimmy is in­ telligent, sensitive, energetic and willing to offer his enthu­ siasm and energy to society, he finds that he is not wanted.

Jimmy graduated from a university but he has to lead the drab, uninspiring life of a salesman in a small sweet-

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stall. He is disgusted with the people's indifference, their apathy and lack of interest in anything. He looks back to the 30s when people, like his father, fought for noble ideals: for the abolition of fascist dictatorship, for freedom of thought and action, for the right to work. In the contempo­ rary world he sees nothing to fight for.

Jimmy's anger, his bitterness, his hysteria and his cruelty come from his demand for recognition. That is why much of his "anger" is turned against Alison, his wife. His life becomes a continuous attack on Alison because of their lack of mutual understanding. He destroys their love and she leaves him. However, at the end of the play, Alison

returns to Jimmy. They are together again. They play some fantastic game, he in the role of a bear, she- of a squirrel, and try to find in it some sort of escape from reality into their own, very lonely world.

The play was a tremendous success. Jimmy Porter was recognized by his own generation, not as a hero, but as a reflection of life itself. The young generation took his troubles very much to heart. Look Back in Anger was their life and their style of living. The play was about them and they accepted it.

Some critics compared Jimmy Porter with Hamlet "in a smaller and domestic setting" The comparison is good,

because Jimmy is a modernised Hamlet, he also "sees something rotten in the State"

The following extract from the play Look Back in Anger

clearly shows Jimmy's ironical attitude to everything

which surrounds him .

....Jimmy (quickly) Did you read about the woman who went to !he mass meeting of a certain American evangelist a! Earls Court? She went forward. to declare herself for love or whatever it is, and, in !he rush of converts to get to the front, she broke four ribs and got kicked in the head. She was yelling her head off in agony, but with 50,000 people putting all they'd got into "Onward Christian Soldiers", nobody even knew she was there. (He looks up sharply for a response, but there isn't any.) Some­ times, I wonder if !here isn't something wrong with me. What about that

lea?

C I iff (still behind paper). What tea? J i m my. Put the kettle on ...

Jim rn y God, how I hate Sundays! It's always so depressing, al­

ways the same. We never seem to get any further, do we? Always !he same ritual. Reading !he papers, drinking tea, ironing. A few more hours, and another week gone. Our youth is slipping away Do you know that?

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C IiI I (throws down paper). What's !haP

Jimmy (casually). Oh, nothing, nothing. Damn you, damn both of you, damn them all.

C IiI L Let's go to the pictures. (To Alison.) What do you say, lovely?

A I is on. I don't think I'll be able to. Perhaps Jimmy would like to go. (To Jimmy.) Would you like to)

Jimmy. And have my enjoyment ruined by the Sunday night yobs in the front row? No, thank you. (Pause.) Did you read Priestley's piece this week? Why on earth I ask, I don't know. I know damned well you haven't. Why do I spend ninepcnce on that damned paper every week? Nobody reads it except me. Nobody can be bothered. No one can raise themselves out ol their delicious sloth. You two will drive me round the bend soon- I know it, as sure as I'm sillin!f here. I know you're going to drive me mad. Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm- that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! (He bangs his breast theatrically). Hallelujah! I'm alive! I've an idea. Why don't we have a lille game. Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive. Just for a while. What do you say? Let's pretend we're human. (He looks from one to the other). Oh, brother, it's such a long time since I was with anyone who got enthu­ siastic about anything...

The "angry young men" disappeared from the English literary scene in the late 50s. Each writer went his own way. Some of them became reconciled with the existing world, others followed the realistic method enriching and improving their artistic mastery. However, the "angries" occupied an important place in the literary evolution of England as they reflected the first post-war revolt of the young writers against the bourgeois way of life.

I. What can you say about the "angry young men" as a literary trend? 2. Why did the trend soon disappear from the literary arena?

3. What was the dramatic innovation in Osborne's Look Back in Anger?

4. Why was Look Back in Anger a tremendous success? 5. What were the causes ol Jimmy Porter's anger?

THE WORKING-CLASS NOVEL

An important development of the 1950s and early 1960s was the emergence of the working-class novel. By this time the "angry young men" had shown the first signs of recon­ ciliation with the existing reality. In fact, the reading public was expecting something new and fresh.

The working-class novel of the 50s- 60s brought new

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themes into the proletarian English literature. First of all they introduced a new working class hero, with his aimless protest and passionate fury against everything and every­ body. Another peculiarity of the working class novels is a strong emphasis on the workers' private life. The first books were very favourably greeted by the English bour­ geois critics, because the hero introduced by the writers agreed with the Labour ideal of the young worker.

The reading public and the critics saw in the books of Sillitoe, Chaplin, Barstow and others the true representa­ tion of the working class life, the sincere attempts of the writers to achieve a better understanding of life conflicts, to solve some of the urgent problems of our times.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, published in

1958, attracted the attention of both the critics and the

readers. The novel was written by a young man, Alan

Sillitoe, and was his first step as a writer.