The Individual and Society in Osborne's Look Back in Anger and Miller's Death of a Salesman Farah B. Al-Sibai Prof. Elias M

Home , Angry young men, Death of a Salesman

AL-BAATH UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

The Individual and Society in Osborne's Look Back in Anger and Miller's Death of a Salesman

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulﬁllment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Literary Studies

Submitted by Farah B. Al-Sibai

Supervised by Prof. Elias M. Khalaf

2019 AL-BAATH UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

The Individual and Society in Osborne's Look Back in Anger and Miller's Death of a Salesman

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulﬁllment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Literary Studies

Submitted by Farah B. Al-Sibai

Supervised by Prof. Elias M. Khalaf

2019 Acknowledgements

To the countless gifts of Merciful Allah...

To the prayers of my mother...

To the support of my father...

To the joys of my life, sister and brother...

To the guidance of my supervisor, Prof. Elias Khalaf...

The light of this dissertation is dedicated.

i Table of Contents:

Chapter One:

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter Two:

Resentment in Look Back in Anger ...... 12

Chapter Three:

Frustration in Death of a Salesman ...... 38

Chapter Four:

Look Back in Anger and Death of a Salesman: A Comparative Analysis.57

Chapter Five:

Conclusion...... 68

Works Cited ...... 72

ii Abstract

This dissertation explores the concerns of the individual in Britain and

America in the aftermath of the Second World War. It selects John

Osborne's Look Back in Anger and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

The ﬁrst play emerges as a representative of the Angry Young Men

Movement which gave voice to the discontentment of the working-class individuals with their conditions in Britain in the ﬁfties. Jimmy Porter, as a representative of the working class, complains about the broken promises of the state in the years following the Second World War. So, the play shows the reasons behind his anger at his surroundings.

Miller's Death of a Salesman shows the effects of World War II on the society which witnessed prosperity and technological advancement.

However, the middle- class individual found himself stuck in the middle of the process of materialistic progress. Hence, Willy Loman emerges as a middle-class figure obsessed with the American Dream which implies that an individual with charisma and popularaity will be able to unlock the door of success. Unfortunately, he finds himself unable to fit in with this materialistic and capitalistic society and we see him committing suicide at the end.

iii In short, these two plays focus on the life of the common individual as a main character who is calling for an improved situation in the society in which he lives. Osborne and Miller depended on realism in order to present an authentic picture of the materialistic societies in these plays as well as the sufferings of the ordinary individuals.

iv Chapter One

Introduction

This dissertation is concerned with the issue of the individual and society in Osborne's Look Back in Anger and Miller's Death of a Salesman. A close reading of these plays reveals that they address realistic topics as a main task which engaged the attention of British and American dramatists in the twentieth century.These two plays tackle a common point: the individual's sufferings by reason of social obstacles.

In an attempt to dramatise the reality in the twentieth century, Osborne and Miller view the stage as a public forum that reﬂects social life and spotlights the common individuals' situations: the problems and sufferings which they encountered during that period. The individual emerges as someone who is preoccupied with a restless aspiration for a better treatment or an improved situation in the society in which s/he lived.

Dramatists, in the twentieth century, talked about the same topics, paying attention to ordinary individuals and their daily concerns. These dramatists' ardent commitment to social reform indicates their conception of the stage as a platform for reforming individuals who constitute the nucleus of their societies. After all, the mission of the theatre is to raise the consciousness of people in order to change the situations which they live in. The theatre must be created to mirror the life

1 of the audiences to let them feel and think deeply while the play is being performed on the stage.

Through their works, Osborne and Miller reveal their views about their societies in an attempt to show them as materialistic and corrupted ones. Therefore, through their art, they dramatise this discontentment. Regardless of the way the anger is expressed in their works, it is not a ﬁt of hysteria but an outburst that aims to uncover the prevailing corruption.

Moreover, it is not by chance that these plays were staged during a time in which the world was recovering from a global catastrophe, that is, the devastating World War II. Literally, they are reactions to the post-war social situation since it was a period full of signiﬁcant changes. This dissertation demonstrates how the Second World War affected the social, political, and economic situations of Britain and America. So it is necessary to see these plays in terms of the political and social contexts of that time.

The events after the Second World War of 1939-1945 stimulated dramatists to adopt the realistic type of drama. As realistic writers, Osborne and Miller set down their observations in an objective manner. They were committed to reality and the truth of their societies and had a desire to picture the atmosphere of their times. Hence, Realism had been the mainstream for most of the 20th century in order to make the theatre serve public functions. During that period, realistic playwrights viewed the stage as the main arena to air their discontentment and anger with what is happening around them. Our examples here are John Osborne's Look Back in Anger as a British play and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman as an American play.

2 Since those realistic authors were reﬂecting the changes in the post-war period, they dramatised their stage characters' feelings of discontentment, anger and anxiety. They depicted the situation of the family and focused on the sufferings of the common individual trying to comment on the events after the Second World War through those ordinary individuals' daily issues and problems.

Look Back in Anger and Death of a Salesman centre on lower- and middle-class characters who do not ﬁt in with their corrupted societies. In other words, as twentieth-century British and American playwrights, they chose the common or ordinary individual as the main character and the themes of their works focused on his realistic situation and problems during that time. So, I will examine the background of these dramas in order to shed light on the grounds that helped in writing those plays. Moreover, by citing evidence from these plays, the reasons behind the common individuals' discontentment will be explicated.

After this very first chapter, the second chapter presents Look Back in Anger as a sample to reveal the situation of Britain in the years following the Second World War. It "was successful – and significant – largely because it seemed to represent a social and historical experience that was distinctively of the mid-fifties; it was undoubtedly contemporary" (Luckhurst 165). Actually, with his successful play, Osborne made a unique contribution to the English theatre and was the first to reflect the discontentment of the working-class individual. As an angry young man, he emerges as the spokesman of his frustrated generation.

Once Look Back in Anger was staged in 1956, it was marked as an epitome of post-war England where feelings of frustration and anger were predominant during that time. Through the medium of the stage,

3 Osborne reﬂected the post-war discontentment and hopelessness experienced by lower-class individuals. In other words, Osborne's play is a reaction which conveys feelings of bitterness and anger at the general mood of Britain at that time.

A close reading of Look Back in Anger reveals that it is necessary to examine the historical context in England after the Second World War as a ﬁrst step which the researcher has to take in order to be aware of the reasons behind the discontentment that prevails in the play. The Second World War lasted for six years which were enough to change the world since it was a period marked as a crucial turning point in history. "Second War – Hitler's war – was a near universal experience. And it lasted a long time — nearly six years for those countries (Britain, Germany) that were engaged in it from beginning to end " (Judt 14). This war was a very hard time for human history.

Britain participated in the conﬂict which turned its history upside down. That is to say, the history of post-war Britain is literally a history of decline. Britain celebrated its victory in the aftermath of World War II. Alistair Davies mentioned that "when the Second World War ended, millions of Britons took to the streets to celebrate" (1). That feeling of cheerfulness was understood after long years of suffering. However, it was not a long time to discover that Britain had lost its Empire. One American politican, describing the British dilemma, remarked, "Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role" (qtd-in Davies 1). Britain had lost its position that was before the war, in other words, it was transformed from an Empire full of power to a country surrounded with chaos and fear due to its altered position. "Those dancing in the streets were largely oblivious to the ways in which the war had transformed the

4 global political and economic order and Britain's position within it" (Davies 1). The euphoria of British victory was smothered when Britain discovered that its position as the world superpower was taken over by the United States of America and the Soviet Union. "The United Kingdom was no longer the predominant power in the world. The swollen military forces of the U. S. A and of the U. S. S. R. and their vast resources had brought them to leadership of the nations" (Reynolds 215).

Moreover, a few years after the war, most of the power of Britain dissolved.

Partly through its own doing and partly as the result of vast changes in the world, Britain became what many of its citizens took a morbid pleasure in calling 'little England'-- or, in a later revision of that demeaning phrase, 'little Britain.' The experience was a painful one, and had unpleasant, if temporary, effects on the national psyche. (Osborne 53-54)

In fact, the cost of victory was huge since "264,000 servicemen and 90,000 civilians had been killed in the war" (Davies 1). Furthermore, millions of people were left wounded, disabled and traumatised. That is why it was easy to detect the consequences of the war mainly in the following two decades- in the 1940s and 1950s. After the war, British people lost the sense of security; they were struck by fear on seeing bombs, rockets and missiles hit their lives, and feeling the heat of explosions and radioactive atoms penetrate their souls. Actually, after the war, Britain lost its political power by reason of its loss of its empire. Gradually, it lost its colonial power, not to mention its withdrawal from the Suez Canal which will be examined in the following chapter.

Moreover, due to its loss of its pre-war position along with the damage that hit the country, Britain asked America to defend it in order to be able

5 to survive. Furthermore, its ﬁnancial stability was also at the mercy of the Americans as well. The country emerged from the war surrounded with destruction and total deterioration of industrial and commercial property. "The industrial and commercial centers of cities and towns [...] had been destroyed in the blitz. Much of Britain's housing stock and physical infrastructure – railways, roads, schools and hospitals – had suffered bomb damage" (Davies 1).

As for the social condition in Britain, British society is a class-based one. The British social strata were divided into different social classes which classiﬁed the individuals according to their wealth, occupation, income, power or lifestyle. The British society before the war was based on strict social stratiﬁcation with sizeable barriers between all the classes. This kind of different levels for the members of society did not disappear in the post-war period.

Autobiographically speaking, Osborne's anger and discontentment with the British society are the outcome of the social environment of the era in which he himself lived. He was able to succeed as long as Look Back in Anger has been recognized as a bomb that put an end to the conventions of the old British theatre.

British theater has always staged new plays, but the history of new writing is comparatively recent, and has always been involved in the project of rewriting our ideas about national identity. According to most accounts, the story begins with the arrival of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger on May 1956 at the Royal Court. (Sierz 16)

It was a revolt against the classical traditional stage. Thus, the great amount of problems which prevailed at that era opened the door to new dramatists like John Osborne, Kingsley Amis and John Arden. These

6 playwrights were young and strongly felt the effects of the disturbance in the society. That is why they used their art to mirror their societies in an attempt to raise the consciousness of the audience.

As new dramatists, they discussed the point that the English drama was out of tune because it did not represent the contemporary English life. They kept away from bringing the attention to the lower-class individual.

Osborne's play had a contemporary and individual voice that spoke to young audiences, and it projected a picture of British life that was gritty and down-to-earth, contesting the idea that new plays could only evoke the fairy-tale world of stiff upper lips. (Sierz 17)

Moreover, after the war, the theatre was a place that people went to for enjoyment since the staged plays were devoid of any realistic ﬂavour.

However, Osborne's play in 1956 marked a cultural moment in the literature of Britain. Feelings of anger, discontentment and despair were very frequent after the Second World War, and, therefore, they naturally occupied British literature. Speciﬁcally speaking, with Osborne's play, a new movement emerged out of it, namely, that of the Angry Young Men. As a group, the AYM shared the same ground: all of them lived at a time when Britain was in decay. Therefore, as the history of Britain was changing, the literary prospect was in change too. Literally, the AYM movement was the outcome of a signiﬁcant historical time. This term refers to a new British generation of post-war writers and intellectuals of working-class origins. In reality, it describes a new generation of English playwrights and novelists.

As a working-class dramatist, Osborne was able to bring a fresh

7 element into British literature by putting his subject matter and attitudes into practice on the stage. Thus, AYM dramatists contributed greatly to the English literature in the ﬁfties. This made their works continue to be read, performed and studied.

In addition, the years after the Second World War are known as the time of austerity in Britain, it is a period when hope was just a mirage that could not be reached. In his play, Osborne did not provide the audience with a clear remedy for the problem. But through the strong, emotional and intellectual protestations of his working-class hero, the author was able to make the audience feel and then be aware of the obstacles besetting them.

As a movement, the AYM has a working-class hero who rebels against the social privileges of the upper classes and complains about the class-based society in which he lives. With his play, Osborne revealed the depth of the human condition of that time by his discontented protagonist, Jimmy Porter, who spoke for an entire disillusioned generation and whose dream of a new great world had failed to come true. It is to be stressed that Osborne's characterisation of his protagonist Jimmy Porter accurately mirrored the spirit of that age.

Hence, by highlighting the literature of the Angry Young Men, whose anger comes from the encircling political, economic and social circumstances, the second chapter presents the historical context in which their literature was written. Consequently, the purpose of Chapter Two is to analyse the conditions in Britain after the war and how they affected the individuals.

Chapter Three presents Death of a Salesman as an American play

8 which highlights the situation of middle-class individuals after the Second World War. Through his play, Miller presents the myth of the American Dream which is based upon a sense of hope and faith that looks forward to the fulﬁllment of human wishes and desires and which embodies the search for freedom and happiness. In this play, Miller's concern is to reveal the truth of the American dream. It is a symbol which represents longing for success, freedom, and self-fulﬁlment. Indeed, it seems to have penetrated the popular imagination as an apparition that attracts every individual to make her/his life better regardless of her/his origin.

Miller is a very good critic of the American system. He criticises the nature of the American life. He reveals how the American individuals become totally obsessed with the modern version of the success dream which turns into a nightmare and at last they turn into its victims. It is like a shining promise of a better life, a mirage that will never be attained.

As a social drama, it comments on the aspects of society at that time. Miller's play is one that best reﬂects and pictures the social condition of American society in the years following the Second World War and the discontentment at that time.

As a dramatist, Miller is classiﬁed as a great playwright who was able to delve into the core of the United States and understood it accurately, as seen in his play which illustrated the cost of blind faith in the American Dream. The shock which he expresses is derived from his "sense of the fragility of the social world" (Bigsby 69). Moreover, the United States is known as a land which boasts of democracy, equality, prosperity and freedom, which proves to be wrong as Miller's play goes on. In other words, the American dream as portrayed in Miller's play was nothing but

9 a pressure on the individuals' lives.

America after the Second World War witnessed a time of business and economic prosperity for Americans, and it is the same period when Death of a Salesman was written. The society was changing fast where great economic prosperity took over. However, it was not the case with all classes in America as American Capitalism is a class-based system. In other words, the middle class experienced discontented feelings as the boom that happened in the late forties did not bring prosperity to every individual.

In this play, Miller uncovers the middle-class individual's perilous situation in the progression of the modern age. He writes his social play in an attempt to reflect the problems that confront the middle-class individual in a capitalisic system where the form of success turns into that of the survival of the fittest. So, his play can be considered as a device which reflects his attitude towards his society during the time the play was staged. Hence, according to Swingewood, a literary work which addresses social issues embodies the spirit of the age, and a great writer is capable of fully expressing the spirit of the age (33).

With the production of Death of a Salesman, Miller soared to new realistic heights and was able to establish his reputation as one of the greatest twentieth-century American playwrights. The play, which was a hit that represented the conﬂict between the individual and the materialistic society, visualised the discontentment of Willy Loman whose notions of success led to his death at the end.

Miller observed the American materialistic society and dramatised it in his works, especially in his most famous play in 1949 which displays

10 both the social and interior obstacles of the modern man. "Miller has the realist's concern to offer a densely populated social world. His characters are manufacturers, salesmen, longshoremen" (Bigsby 70). Therefore, Miller produced a realistic play about the life of the middle-class individual as his protagonist, Willy Loman, who is pictured from his point of view. Willy Loman is a common man who faces social obstacles. However, he adheres to the social codes and blindly follows them to achieve the American dream.

The aim of this dissertation is to focus on the exact representation of life after the Second World War in Britain and America as reﬂected in those plays which emerge as landmarks in British and American drama, and proposes to reveal these materialistic societies and the sufferings they caused to ordinary individuals.

11 Chapter Two

Resentment in Look Back in Anger

A proper approach to Osborne's Look Back in Anger lies in investigating the historical and literary contexts in which the play was written in order to highlight the relationship of the individual and society therein.

After the Second World War (1939-1945), Britain knew constant mortiﬁcation because of its altered world position. In fact, Britain lost its former position as a world superpower. It found itself surrounded with only two truly powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. "The United Kingdom was no longer the predominant power in the world" (Reynolds 215).

In addition, Britain lost its colonial power, which made its position more unstable. The pre-war colonial power actually crumpled. "The British government attempted to guide and direct the forces she could no longer fully control" (Smith 812). In 1947, India declared its independence. Indeed, it was obvious that Britain could no longer hold control in India which meant that it lost its political power. "It was clear that Britain could not maintain its world wide Empire [...] In the case of India, Britain would have to relinquish power" (Childs 27). Davies stated that "the new Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee [...] made Indian independence a priority [...] because he realised that Britain lacked the resources to

12 hold India" (1-2).

Moreover, the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 strengthed the feeling of failure for the British government. When the Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, Britain, France, and Israel decided to take a military action against Egypt. "In 1956, the British, French and Israeli governments conspired to invade Egypt, in relation for its nationalisation of the strategic Suez Canal" (Davies 2). However, the attempt to retake the Suez Canal "brought Postwar Britain's frustration and inward ills boiling to the surface" (Osborne 57). Because of the external pressure of the United States, "the British bowed to US pressure to evacuate [...] the Suez Canal Zone" (Childs 61).

On the other hand, the infrastructure in Britain had been destroyed and to guarantee its victory, "the British exploited and ransacked their own resources" (Judt 14). Actually, the British expenditure for the war surpassed its budget. "Sir Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented a paper to the Cabinet indicating that Britain was virtually bankrupt" (Childs 9).

So, owing to its ﬁnancial crisis, Britain turned to the United States for a loan to rebuild the cities. In 1947, George C. Marshall, the Secretary of State of America, offered a programme through which the US loaned great sums of money to European countries. UK and France had received "$ 4.4 billion and $ 1.9 billion in loans respectively" (Judt 90). Britain emerged from the war in a catastrophic situation not only politically but also economically. "By the second half of 1945 the British economy was in serious trouble" (Sanders 47).

Socially speaking, the British individuals belonged to three social

13 classes. The upper class, the working class and the middle class. The social structure in Britain is class-based and after the war, these old, oppressive barriers were still undissolved.

After the war, Britain was living in an austerity and an aura of discontentment was prevailing the nation. The Labour Party won the election which was held in 1945. It was trying to constitute what was called a Welfare State and it promised to remove the boundaries between the social classes. Still, the gap between the plans and the process of putting them into practice was huge; the state of inequality was still dominant.

The public found that the new government had failed to make a difference to the political and social matters. The young working-class Englishmen found that it was unable to deal with their problems. The class division in post-war period was still the dominant power because the upper-class individuals preserved their pre-war living standards in spite of those promises of the Establishment to bring the Welfare State into reality with prosperity to all Britons. Hence, the failure of the Labour Party affected greatly the consciousness of its electors. Skovmand suggested that "The defeat [...] meant a setback to all those who had believed in the Labour Government as 'their government' " (15).

This historical background emerges as an opposite beginning to this chapter as the play's literary context drew heavily on these changes in post-war Britain.

The devastating effects of the war made British authors put writing aside. That is why the literary scene between 1945-1950 was barren. However, this stagnation did not last for a long time since the authors

14 began to estimate the repercussions of the war. Therefore, they started addressing the horrors of the war and the situation of class stratiﬁcation and expressed feelings of discontentment and anxiety. After the war, the British drama pictured the everyday life of the common individual as being discontented with the Establishment and impatient with the sluggishness of her/his society.

So, post-war literature reﬂected the attitude of the young British generation as the Labour Party failed to meet their aspirations. In fact, those post-war young British authors were coming from working-class origin. Many of them were grantees of the Butler Education Act of 1944 that made them able to attend urban grammar schools and universities. Actually, as a Welfare State, it tried to give working-class individuals a better chance in education which led to the appearance of a new generation of working-class writers who ﬂourished in the literary scene in 1950s. This decade witnessed the appearance of an important literary movement, the "Angry Young Men" movement.

Angry Young Men, known term in Britain in the fifties, referred to a group of young writers who came from working-class background. They were introduced to the British audience in an official way by Osborne's play. John Russel Taylor made the term more popular when he said: "8 May 1956 still marks the breakthrough of a new drama into the British theatre; and Osborne himself remains [...] the first of the "Angry Young Men"" (37). They portrayed the mentality of the young generation of post-war time who belonged to the lower classes and who felt that privileges were reserved for upper-class individuals. Therefore, in order to present an authentic picture of what was taking place in their homeland, they adopted Realism as a literary style.

15 In addition, being in a class-based society, these Angry Young Men were marginalised, that is to say, they were taken away from the centre of British life, which led them to look at the situation in an objective way. These AYM were:

a necessary ingredient of the period from which they grew, [...] a view of life which corresponded to the reality of that life. [...] What they did do was to describe the injustice which existed, and to stress, in plain everyday language the desperate need for some change. (Carter 29-30)

The angry writers who represent this movement were John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, John Braine and others.

The most striking example of the angry young man was Jimmy Porter, the ranting protagonist of John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956). Other works then taken to express 'angry' attitude included Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (1954), and John Braine's novel of social ambition, Room at the Top (1957). (Baldick 12)

Since they share the same background, the authors along with their protagonists were expressing their dissatisfaction with life in post-war England. "'Angry Young Man' was used to refer both to the protagonists of hard-hitting ﬁction and drama and to their authors, who frequently shared with their characters a provincial, working-class background" (Cuddon 38-39). As rebellious writers, they introduced a new type of hero for the British literature who was known as the "anti-hero". This anti-hero was in conﬂict with society around him as he rejected its values and customs. For Schüssel, this new anti-hero "has little in common with the radiant heroes of the literature that went before" (Schüssel 385). In fact, he is a major character who is seen on stage. As an anti-hero, he is an individual whose manners are opposed to the social norms. It can be

16 said that he is the one who mirrored and commented on social issues and criticised political matters. Thus, the AYM visualised their new young hero as a real individual who has a working-class background.

Indeed, their literary works have many similarities in common and the main thing is that the major character is always an angry young man who does not fit in with his society since it is broken and corrupted. They shared rebelliousness, scorn and criticism towards society highlighting its monotony and injustice. Zachary Leader states that "they are full of rage at those they hold responsible for their disposition or plight" (61). Another important characteristic is that the angry young man educated at a university, still struggled to find his place in society as his education conflicts with his living standards.

The main trait of the AYM was their sensitivity about class division since their protest was mainly against "the rigid pattern of class stratiﬁcation" (Kroll 556). They were so sensitive about class stratiﬁcation, that they thought they deserved a better status, which led them to marry upper-class women. As a wife, she was subjected to her husband's furious protestations since she came from a class he was angry with, but at the same time he was aspiring for its advantages. In a way, he is an ambivalent individual who "has no admiration or liking for the class he is gatecrashing" yet, "he wants its advantages and privileges" (Allsop 213).

As angry young writers, they were dissatisﬁed with the prevalent state of the British society and felt the need to comment on it. "In a short time all such vocal protesters were classiﬁed as 'angry young men' or as 'the young angrier' (Cuddon 40). So, their works mirrored the social situation in Britain after the war. Through their subject matter and attitudes, they

17 were able to bring a new element into English literature. Therefore, John Osborne's play, Look Back in Anger, can be regarded as a turning point in the history of British drama since the Angry Young Men movement emerged out of it. Cuddon remarks:

the writer mainly but indirectly responsible for its popularity was John Osborne whose play Look Back in Anger (1957) spoke for a generation of disillusioned and discontented young men who were strongly opposed to the establishment; to its social and political attitudes and mores, and indeed to the whole 'bourgeois ethic'. (43)

In fact, the Angry Young Men were able to present a genuine picture of the chaos which prevailed in Britain at that time. Furthemore, their realistic depiction of working-class life led their plays to be labelled as "Kitchen Sink" drama.

It can be said that 'Kitchen Sink' Drama changed the track of the British theatre. Early after the Second World War, it was out of expectation to see a revolution on the British stage. In his book, 1956 And All That, Dan Rebellato described the miserable state of the British theatrical scene in the post-war period saying that "By 1956, British theatre was in a terrible state." (1) The early 1950s works did not visualise the changes in British culture. "While war and suffering raged around it, the theatre continued to reﬂect a tiny segment of society, and ignored the rest" (Rebellato 1). However, a new type of drama is performed on the British stage with Osborne's Look Back in Anger.

Kitchen Sink Drama advocated a realistic reﬂection of the physical and social milieus in which the working classes lived. It pictured the everyday lives of working-class individuals who struggled against the destruction of moral values and the breakdown of community. Therefore,

18 it is worth exploring its features in this regard.

First, KSD spotlighted a different setting for the stage. It mostly set its scenes in working-class setting with modest furniture. The setting was in a bedsit with its simple domestic furniture. Hence came its epithet. KSD made the kitchen a pivotal area in the social life. Reid Douglas stated that "Real life always seems to live in a particularly unfashionable district" (180). As for Jimmy Porter, he lived in an attic apartment where the kitchen and all the living spaces were one room, as the play indicates.

As a working-class writer, John Osborne led a group of writers whose plays were produced from a working-class point of view. Actually, the plays of this new generation of authors were autobiographical, because they were writing about themselves and the working-class background they shared. So, all the writers of KSD came from working-class origin. John Russel Taylor wrote about this change: "for many years, the West End stage has been a middle-class preserve. Middle-class writers, [...] have written for mainly middle-class audiences. But now things are different" (14).

The third feature is that those working-class authors, in writing about themselves, they presented working-class characters "whose lives had not been regarded before as ﬁt subject for the English Stage" (Cornish, Ketels XV). In fact, the Kitchen Sink dramatists revolted against the former ways in addressing conventional subjects. In other words, they were courageous enough to push taboos and transgress moral boundaries. They centred on more contemporary issues like poverty and homosexuality. Hence, the issues that they discussed are quite different from those which ﬁgured on the British stage before 1956. The major purpose of KSD was to put the real lives of working-class people along

19 with their social suffering on stage as a revenge of its authors "against what they perceived to be an elite of snobbish [...] dramatists" (Sierz 18).

In a corresponding manner, this change in dramatic themes led authors to the appearance of a new language used by the characters who plainly expressed their discontentment with the upper class. As Cornish and Ketels observed: "New characters and fresh themes called for fresh idioms, new patterns of stage dialogue, and new theatrical forms" (XI).

An analysis of Osborne's Look Back in Anger reveals that it has the characteristics of KSD. It exposes the real lives of those working-class individuals and how they suffer from inequality in their society. Jimmy Porter, the protagonist, is called an "angry young man" and the action took place in a dark, cluttered attic room:

The scene is a fairly large attic room [...] Most of the furniture is simple, and rather old. Up R. is a double bed [...] Down R. below the bed is a heavy chest of drawers, covered with books, neckties and odds and ends, including a large, tattered toy teddy bear and soft, woolly squirrel [...] Below the wardrobe is a gas stove, and, beside this, a wooden food cupboard, on which is a small, portable radio. (Osborne, I. 3)

Look Back in Anger emerges as a kitchen Sink play that shows the theatre goers the real face of Britain after the Second World War. "The moment of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (Royal Court, 1956) was undoubtedly a symbolic one in the history of postwar British theatre and of postwar culture generally" (Luckhurst 164).

The play in fact is a dramatisation of the author's own discontentment. Since Look Back in Anger is a key example of the Angry Young Men movement, it expresses the mood of the ﬁfties and exposes the opinions of a great deal of writers. Like other Angry-Young-Men plays, this drama

20 portrays the changes that happened after the Second World War and shows the disappointment at that time as the end of the war marked the end of Great Britain. The director of the play, Tony Richardson, stated that "Look Back in Anger is the best play written since the War" (Heilpern 153).

Osborne's play conveys the anger of the main character, who dramatises his anger by reason of the inferior position of the working-class individual. Indeed, it is in this play that Osborne expresses his discontentment and anger at the bleak situation of Britain after the war.

In 1956, Osborne launched a revolution against the British theatre when Look Back in Anger was produced. He tried to assert that the purpose of drama is to reveal the truth in order to raise the consciousness of the audience. Osborne's own life was the base that he built this play upon. Hence, this study proposes to spotlight the anger of the main working-class character with some autobiographical facts about Osborne and show the reasons behind Jimmy Porter's rage and discontentment with the post-war British conditions.

Jimmy Porter is regarded as Osborne's mouthpiece in criticising the Establishment, the upper-class and traditional values. John Osborne has been credited with being able to dramatise the frustrations and disappointment experienced by the young generation by reﬂecting the anger of the main character, Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger.

The impact of World War II and the disillusions caused by the Establishment made the young generation perplexed and frustrated to the core. Jimmy Porter was unsastiﬁed with everything around him. He

21 was discontented with the political and social milieus of the that time. He protested against the way they had been treated by the Establishment and society. His criticism was directed at everyone and everything around him. Ronald Hayman put it in a succinct way saying, "Jimmy pours [...] sulphuric energy into the attacks he launches on anything that surrounds him - Alison, Cliff, Helena, the Sunday Papers, the Parliament" (4).

His contempt for the Establishment is obvious when he sneered at Nigel, Alison's brother, who stands as a candidate for the Parliament. As Rebellato illustrated, "Jimmy Porter seems to be angry about everything, and arguably political targets are intertwined with his attacks on friends and lovers" (12). He disdained Nigel who represents the British politicians. In spite of the fact that throughout the play Nigel is described as a stupid one, his position to be in power was preserved since he went to Sandhurst. For Jimmy Porter, the class system has to do with upper-class people like Nigel who will "end up in the Cabinet" (Osborne, I. 14) due to his own origin and education. That is why Jimmy Porter feels that he has no role in society and his life is devoid of any meaning since only those with upper-class background get their positions in society.

Moreover, close scrutiny reveals that these gloomy post-war days have nothing to do with the British past era. In the play, Osborne referred to that time as the Edwardian age which is the period "between the turn of the century and the outbreak of the First World War [...] which swept away the last vestiges of nineteenth-century conﬁdence" (Osborne 96).The sun of those days actually sank down since Britain is not the same anymore.

Alison's father, Colonel Redfern, expressed his disappointment as he

22 remembered the day India declared its independence in 1947, which illustrated the decline of Britain as a world superpower. He described that day by saying that it is the "last day the sun shone" (Osborne, III. i. 70). As Sierz suggests, "Jimmy constantly sees himself as trapped between a past which can only be looked back at and a present which is unfulﬁlling. But his idealised vision of the past only reminds him of the poverty of ideals in the present" (43). Indeed, remembering those old golden days of Britain before he went to India in 1914, Mr. Colonel Redfern lamented:

The England I remembered was the one I left in 1914, and I was happy to go on remembering it that way. Beside, I had the Maharajah's army to command—that was my world, and I loved it, all of it [...] I think the last day the sun shone was when that dirty little train steamed out of that crowded, suffocating Indian station, and the battalion band playing for all it was worth. I knew in my heart it was all over then. Everything. ( Osborne, II. ii. 62)

His words in truth illustrate how the situation of post-war Britain hurt him in comparison with the past golden days when Britain was the world super-power.

Moreover, the loss of Britain's position as a world super-power made America take over the world policy. Its impact was increasing and its culture conquered all the world including Britain.

The play tackles the situation of contemporary culture. Actually, the culture of the ﬁfties changed through the impact of the process of Americanisation. Tony Judt deﬁned the term "Americanisation" as "the adoption in Europe of all the practices and aspirations of modern America" (350). An evidence of this change found expression in the rise of youth culture. By the mid-1950s, the teenager had been invented both as a target of the consumer society and as the object of outrage.

23 Teenagers were a huge new market for clothes, music, radios and other goods (Sierz 215). Jimmy Porter expresses his annoyance at the decline of the true English culture and the rise of the process of 'Americanisation', saying, "I must be getting sentimental. But I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American age" (Osborne, I. 11).

Jimmy's attitude to culture in fact reﬂects his patriotism. Throughout the play, he mentioned British authors as William Shakespeare and T. S. Eliot. Furthermore, musically speaking, he alluded to Ralph Vaughan Williams, a British contemporary composer: "Oh, yes. There's a Vaughan Williams. Well, that's something, anyway. Something strong, something simple, something English" (Osborne, I. 11). Vaughan Williams "drew heavily on English folk-music for his themes" Therefore, "Jimmy's interest in his [Williams'] music suggests his profound 'Englishness" and his deep involvement in the traditions of English culture" (Osborne 97).

Moreover, it is Jimmy's patriotism which makes us, as readers and spectators, understand his words when he talked about Mr. Colonel, saying, "Poor old Daddy—just one of those sturdy old plants left over from the Edwardian Wilderness that can't understand why the sun isn't shining any more" (Osborne, II. ii. 60-61).

Throughout their writings, the Angry Young Men tend to afﬁrm their true English culture, their "Englishness", as they refuse the rise of this new culture at the expense of the decline of their own culture. Literally, Americanisation is the evidence that proves the inferiority of Britain in the face of the United States.

Jimmy Porter expresses his discontentment with the new era of Britain. He shows nostalgia for the time when Britain was more powerful

24 on the political stage. Therefore, Jimmy Porter was always linked to the past time as he is described by others, a "knight in shining armor" (Osborne, II. i. 39) and Alison's friend, Helena, mentions that he "was born out of his time" (Osborne, II. ii. 84).

He detests the contemporary time. Sierz argues: "Jimmy constantly sees himself as trapped between a past which can only be looked back at and a present which is unfulﬁlling. But his idealized vision of the past only reminds him of the poverty of ideals in the present" (43). It can be said that Jimmy Porter expressed nostalgia for the good, old days of Britain since he belonged to a generation who had to cope with the difﬁculties and disappointments left from the Second World War.

Furthermore, throughout the play we notice that the pivotal theme is class struggle. Jimmy Porter lashed out mostly at the upper class to which his wife belongs. He expressed his fury with his wife, friends and everything around him, and hence, with life itself. This sense of desperation reached its top when he hurled his anger against everything related to the bourgeoisie. His speeches were not merely violent words, but they were pregnant with denotations.

Jimmy Porter's anger reflects the frustrations of a particular generation and a specific class, and the reason behind his anger was his awareness of his inferior position even though he received university education. Working-class individuals were granted the opportunity of education, yet they were kept away from the centre of life and their views were marginalised (Gilleman 71). In spite of his educational qualifications, Jimmy Porter ended up running a "sweet stall".

Osborne tried to say that the opportunity given to working-class

25 students through the Education Act did not bestow them recognition from their society or provide them with a suitable job which should be tally with their education. In other words, though Jimmy Porter was a working-class educated individual, he did not get what he had expected from his own education.

In short, because he did not attend Oxford or Cambridge, the society did not acknowledge his education. The play in fact refers to the inferiority of those redbrick universities: "According to him, it's not even redbrick, but white tile" (Osborne, II. i. 36).

In spite of the fact that he is educated, he owns a candy store which he runs with his friend Cliff, and lives in a small, cramped and shabby attic ﬂat in Midlands with his wife, and these indeed do not only deny him the power that he deserves but also degrade him. So, the way he lives his life can tell us a lot about the reason behind his anger, i. e., he is intelligent and educated, yet he is poor and his job is not suitable for a graduate man.

He laments that despite his academic qualiﬁcations, he has been deprived of the real power and opportunities allocated for the children of the Establishment, and those born to privilege through their family connections. Consequently, he resorts to ﬁts of anger as the only means he can use in order to get a better position in his society.

He was the spokesman for the young Britons of 1956 when he lashed out about his alienation from a society which deprived him of having any signiﬁcant role. As Lacey expresses, he "was offered here as a spokesman for an experience that was essentially generational and speciﬁc to the post-war world – 'the younger post-war generation'.

26 Porter's response to the post-war world was antagonistic and ungrateful" (18).

For him, Alison's family and friends are "natural enemies" (Osborne, I. 29). Cliff, however, is his friend because he has a working-class origin. but he hates Alison's friends and makes fun of them saying "Oh dear, oh dear! My wife's friends! Pass Lady Bracknell the cucumber sandwiches, will you?" (Osborne, II. i. 45). This reﬂects his distaste for upper-class people and their pretensions. Literally, he is against anything related to upper-class manners.

Because of his hatred for class distinctions, he keeps on attacking Alison both verbally and physically throughout the play since she reminds him of everything he disdains concerning class borders. Tony Judt remarks that Jimmy Porter "abuses his wife Alison for her buorgeois background" (300).

Alison's parents and all her rich friends were just like enemies to Jimmy Porter whom must be attacked due to their upper-class origins. To him, they were "militant, arrogant, and full of malice or vague" (Osborne, I. 13). In fact, Alison's mother was in the forefront who got a great deal of criticism.

Because Jimmy Porter came from a lower-class background, Alison's mother opposed their marriage severely. He raved on and called her mother "an old bitch and she should be dead" (Osborne, II. i. 47). His attack went on:

My God, those worms will need a good dose of salts the day they get through her! Oh what a bellyache you've got coming to you, my little wormy ones! Alison's mother is on the way! [...] She will pass away, my friends, leaving a

27 trail of worms gasping for laxatives behind her – from purgatives to purgatory. (Osborne, II. i. 47)

In truth, this is one of Osborne's autobiographical facts that he dramatises in the play. In other words, In 1951, Osborne married the actress Pamela Elizabeth Lane. They acted together and fell in love with each other. What must be said is that their marriage was opposed severely by Lane's middle-class parents. At one time, they hired a private detective to watch him . After that, they tried to withstand the marriage by telling Pamela that Osborne is a homosexual person. Osborne wrote a letter to his friend Creighton, who got the role of Cliff in the play, describing the words Pamela's mother hurled at him: "The big gun she [Pamela's mother] brings up against me is that I am QUEER. Yes!! Or as she puts it: a NANCY BOY" (qtd-in Heilpern 119).

That very same scene, Pamela's parents hiring for a private detective, is portrayed in Look Back in Anger: "So she [Alison's mother] hires detectives to watch me, to see if she can't somehow get me into the News of the World" (Osborne, II. i. 46). News of the World is "a well-known English scandal sheet, renowned for printing stories of adultries, illicit love affairs, rapes etc" (Osborne 96). However, Osborne and Pamela got married. After a few years, she unfortunately got an abortion, something which happened Alison in the play.

Osborne's marriage to Lane stimulated him to write the play. So, calling it an autobiographical work is so accurate. As Heilpern put it, the play is "his [Osborne's] most autobiographical play" (123). For example, John Osborne's voice is in fact heard in Jimmy Porter and Pamela Lane is characterised as Alison in the play. In that very same year he married his second wife, Mary Ure. As an actress, she was the character who played

28 the role of Alison in Look Back in Anger that was inspired by his ﬁrst wife.

Actually, Alison's father, Colonel Redfern, wondered about the reason behind Jimmy's marriage to his daughter in spite of the fact that he hated everything related to their class. He said, "Why should he have married you, feeling as he did about everything?" (Osborne, II. ii. 61). Alison replied by saying, "Perhaps it was revenge [...] Some people do actually marry for revenge" (Osborne, II. ii. 61). John Mander mentions that "in bullying her [Alison], Jimmy is certainly getting an easy revenge on the class he detests" (147).

As the play goes on, one notices that Alison is his target. He humiliates her, her parents, her friends and their manners. It is their relationship which actually ignites the class tension between them. Hence, he is frustrated that his education did not change his class status. His level of education did not make him an individual of a higher class.

Moreover, slothfulness is one of the reasons behind Jimmy's anger. He feels that his life is going monotonously and everything around is boring. We see him at the beginning of the play lash at everyday papers and books as being the same, "Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week's. Different books—same reviews" (Osborne, I. 4). He is discontented with the daily routine that everything is the same every day.

Besides, he disdains indifferent and phlegmatic people and requires enthusiasm from all around him. "No one can raise themselves out of their delicious sloth. You two will drive me round the bend soon - I know it, as sure as I'm sitting here. I know you're going to drive me mad. Oh

29 heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm" (Osborne, I. 9). He mentions that those characters around him lack enthusiasm. Therefore, he wants them to be aware of the fact that their youth is fading.

Furthermore, Alison's passivity is another cause for his anger. Actually, he was looking forward to Alison's energetic reaction every time he humiliated her with words like "sycophantic, phlegmatic and pussilanimous" (Osborne, I. 15). He is frustrated with her silence since he expects her to be enthusiastic and energetic. Describing her indifferent attitude towards his anger he says, "All this time, I have been married to this woman, this monument to non-attachment" (Osborne, I. 15). Therefore, his anger comes out as a result.

The fact is that he is a sensitive, enthusiastic, and energetic individual who wants to share these characteristics with the society. But, truthfully, the society is stagnant, slothful, and class-dominated. Look Back in Anger shows Jimmy's suffering from the lack of response from others that makes him rave at the society. He expresses his anger by saying, "Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm" (Osborne, I. 11).

For him, one should pay attention to what goes on around him. He notes that people should be aware of and concerned with their surroundings. He says, "Nobody can be bothered. No one can raise themselves out of their delicious sloth [...] Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm - that's all" (Osborne, I. 9).

Jimmy Porter shows a passion to feel that he is alive, that he is a

30 human being and this is actually one of the purposes that pushed Osborne to write plays: "I want to make people feel, to give them lessons in feeling. They can think afterwards" (Osborne 47). Michael Anderson asserts this point as follows: "The expression of feeling is always central to Osborne's successful plays. What constitutes that 'feeling' differs from play to play [...] some kind of distress is always there, a helpless fury against the insufﬁciencies of the everyday world" (23).

As spectators, we see Jimmy Porter say, "Why don't we have a little game? Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive. Just for a while. [...] it's such a long time since I was with anyone who got enthusiastic about anything" (Osborne, I. 9). It can be noted that Jimmy Porter compared his effort in pursuit of a vibrant life to the sluggishness of the world around him. His furiousness is an attempt to awaken his surrounding environment from their deep sleep.

Austin E. Quigley said that "Jimmy's attacks on Alison repeatedly focus on what he perceives as her lethargy, her timidity, and her readiness to accept whatever comes her way" (42). From the beginning of the play, Jimmy Porter laments about Alison's passiveness: "she's a great one for getting used to things. If she were to die, and wake up in paradise, after the first five minutes, she'd have got used to it" (Osborne, I. 10). Calling her a pussilanimous lady, he talked about the content of the word as the following: "pussilanimous. Adjective. Wanting of firmness of mind, of small courage, having a little mind, mean spirited, cowardly, timid of mind [...] That's my wife [...] (shouting hoarsely.) Hi, Pusey! " (Osborne 16). This reveals that there is no place for the energetic youngs in a society full of despondency and disillusionment.

Moreover, for Jimmy Porter, in order to appreciate the value of life, the

31 negative experience is the key, namely, suffering and death. His pain is actually deep-rooted when at his early age, his father died. As it seems, he was deeply affected when his father passed away because he was a child. In fact, Osborne's father died when he was a ten-year-old child and that is why he was mourning the death of his father all his life. Jimmy Porter talked about his father's death as follows:

I watched my father dying—when I was ten years old [...] He would talk to me for hours, pouring out all that was left of his life to one, lonely, bewildered little boy, who could barely understand half of what he said. [...] I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry - angry and helpless. (Osborne, II. i. 51-52)

His words expose his sufferings when he was a child. As a little boy, he suffered a lot as he witnessed the death of his father. So, he grew up with psychological marks lashing at everything around him.

In a similar manner, he expressed his suffering when Mrs. Tanner, the mother of his friend Hugh, was about to die. He sympathised with her since she is a poor and uneducated woman as Alison ssid, "Jimmy seems to adore her [Hugh's mother] principally because she's been poor almost all her life, and she's frankly ignorant" (Osborne, II. i. 40).

He is very angry with Alison's indifference. Actually, he does not feel that her pregnancy is important for him. His agony stems from her refusal to accompany him to Hugh's mother. Actually, this shows her rejection of him and the class he belongs to since she knows how deep his attachment is to her, i.e., Hugh's mother. So, his anger is due to the fact that he has to suffer and tolerate all this alone.

I don't care if she's going to have a baby [...] Because that bitch won't even send her a bunch of ﬂowers—I know! [...] She thought that because Hugh's mother was a deprived and ignorant old woman, [...] she couldn't be taken

32 seriously. (Osborne, II. ii. 67)

Jimmy Porter's upper-class wife remained careless about the suffering of others, that is why he hurled her with a violent speech saying, "If something – something would happen to you, and wake you out of your beauty sleep! If you could have a child and it would die [...] I wonder if you might even become a recognizable human being yourself" (Osborne, I. 31). Osborne wants to indicate beforehand Alison's loss of pregnancy and he does this ironically. For Jimmy Porter, without experiencing the feeling of suffering from the loss of someone who is close and important, Alison would be an imperfect person.

As Sierz suggested, "to qualify as a human being, Alison must according to her husband – suffer loss, just as he has suffered the loss of his father, and later of Mrs Tanner. From this loss comes his anger, and his idea of being enthusiastic, alive, human" (38). In this regard, it is to be stressed that this is what we call the catharsis that he lives with, that for him one should suffer in order to feel and to be a human being.

After Helena, Alison's friend, said to Jimmy Porter "You think the world's treated you pretty badly, don't you?" (Osborne, II. i. 48), Alison commented saying, "Oh, don't try and take his suffering away from him—he'd be lost without it" (Osborne, II. i. 48). Now, let us consider Jimmy's reaction, "He looks at her in surprise" (Osborne, II. i. 48). Her remark really touched his heart even though she said this in a sarcastic way. Throughout the play Jimmy Porter lacks commiseration from others. Therefore, what he suffers is because of the lack of response from society. He wants Alison to share his suffering with him but his wife is cynical towards him. This leads him to be angry and results in his

33 feeling as an alienated individual.

The youthful generation actually had a sense of helplessness and purposelessness. In the post-war period emerged such a state of nothingness that they found life devoid of any meaning as they lived for nothing to achieve and nothing to contend against.

Describing his meaningless life, Jimmy Porter said:

God, how I hate Sundays! It's always so depressing, always the same. We never seem to get any further, do we? Always the same ritual. Reading the papers, drinking tea, ironing. A few more hours and another week gone. Our youth is slipping away" (Osborne, I. 8-9).

He felt that there is no hope for the rotten society to rise again.

Furthermore, Osborne used the word "why" many times in the play in an attempt to dramatise Jimmy's bursts of frustration: Jimmy Porter asks: "why do I do this every Sunday?" (Osborne, I. 4), "why do you bother? You can't understand a word of it" (Osborne, I. 5), "why don't we have a little game. Let's pretend we are human beings " (Osborne, I. 9). Consequently, what he had to cope with starting from the injustice, the slothfulness and the bitter experiences which he underwent ended up with his feeling as an alienated individual. His feelings as an isolated individual led him to question if he is betrayed. He told his friend Cliff,

Living night and day with another human being has made me predatory and suspicious. I know that the only way of ﬁnding out exactly what's going on is to catch them when they don't know you're looking. When she goes out, I go through everything—trunks, cases, drawers, bookcase, everything. Why? To see if there is something of me somewhere, a reference to me. I want to know if I'm being betrayed. (Osborne, I. 30)

34 The bitterness which his words imply emerges when he adds: "She gets letters. (He holds it up.) Letters from her mother, letters in which I'm not mentioned at all because my name is a dirty word. And what does she do? [...] She writes long letters back to Mummy, and never mentions me at all, because I'm just a dirty word to her too" (Osborne, I. 30-31). He struggled to ﬁnd existence in his society that was opposed to his point of view. This failed attempt to ﬁnd out identity led to his anger and isolation from society and his dear ones too.

Therefore, Jimmy Porter served as the spokesman for those who suffered from the lack of individual worth. In this chapter, I have illustrated the diatribe of Jimmy Porter which is not useless. His tirades are not for the sake of criticism but are aimed at establishing a better world for himself and his own generation.

Jimmy Porter in fact was the young Briton of the mid-ﬁfties. Young Englishmen recognised in him things they had experienced themselves. His violent speech contained scathing criticism for the Establishment. Moreover, loaded with anger, Osborne's protagonist was not able to tolerate the actions of people towards whom he had nothing but scorn.

He ranted and raged, yet he did not provide solutions to these socio-political ills. He succeeded in highlighting the ills of the society. He was an educated and intelligent individual with working-class origins. In the play, suffering and anger were associated with the working class. This frustration and anger made Jimmy Porter an angry young man. In a word, he is treated as a mere working-class individual rather than as an educated one that blamed the class system of his society for making his existence meaningless. Thus, the youths of the ﬁfties lived dreary, meaningless and purposeless lives. Everything around was stiﬂing and

35 the Second World War made social life full of dreariness and sordidness.

Therefore, Jimmy Porter used his anger as the only means to expose the truth of Britain after the war. Through the language and the ﬂow of words, Look Back in Anger revealed the discontentment of that period. His rage throughout the play reﬂects this kind of hopelessness in England as it has lost its great position in the wake of the war. J. B. Priestly writes: "We know vaguely that we are no longer top dogs in the world, but apart from that we don't know what kinds of dogs we are. We are in danger of turning into a faceless nation" (qtd-in Carter 19).

The backward look of John Osborne examines the situation of England on the social, political and economic levels. In other words, Look Back in Anger documented a crucial decade in Britain when the transformation from an empire into a country surrounded with chaos was taking place. Osborne was the first to present this new kind of plays on the British stage in his country. This type of drama reflects his anger which denounces the ills in the society. Thus, he uses drama to dissect social issues hoping for a change. The anger that is referred to is not hysterical but a filteration which is done through art to be reasonable anger.

Besides, the look in Look Back in Anger is a backward one which examines the class structure in Britain as well. Osborne's play reﬂects detestation which is expressed by its protagonist, Jimmy Porter, against the class system which had been around since Britain had existed. As mentioned before, Britain had always classiﬁed its citizens into upper, middle and working classes. Jimmy Porter was totally aware of the fact of the unremoved barriers between social classes.

36 Like his generation, Jimmy Porter felt that he had no room in the class system since the class system did not provide a space for those educated people with working-class background. That is to say, even though they had been educated, they had no alternative but to work at jobs unsuitable for their academic qualiﬁcations. The isolation Jimmy

Porter felt was the outcome of social displacement in his country. He was credited with being the ﬁrst young voice that presented an authentic picture of what was taking place in Britain after the war.

37 Chapter Three

Frustration in Death of a Salesman

An opposite approach to the individual's frustration in Miller's Death of a Salesman lies in an exploration of the ideological and literary background to this play. Such an exploration can account for his discontent with the society around him.

The belief in the American Dream is deeply rooted in the history of America. It describes an attitude of hope and faith that looks forward to the fulﬁllment of human wishes and desires. America has long been known as a land of equality and democracy where opportunities are rights to all, the thing that makes it a utopia for them all. People believed in the concept of the American Dream which made the American society as one established on these idealistic principles. As a result, with such a great vision, the concept of the 'American Dream' arose.

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life souls be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social ordering which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitions circumstances of birth or position. (Adams 404)

For Adams, the concept of the 'American Dream' is based on the principles of democracy and equality and relies heavily on the notion that each one can achieve success irrespective of his circumstances of birth

38 and position.

In Death of a Salesman the 'American Dream' is based on the idea that being a popular individual is the key to unlock the door of success. Miller, in this play, lays bare the concept by exposing the vainness of this modern version of dream of success in the United States of America. Actually, Langston Hughes's words of a "dream deferred" penetrate Miller's play: "what happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun? / Or fester like a sore / And the run?" (Hughes 252). Hughes's metaphorical vision of a "dream deferred" is telling: it emerges as a seed but has yet borne any fruit.

After the Second World War, the economic situation in America witnessed a great prosperity. Robert W. Corrigan described that era as "[the] instant age. Everything [...] can be produced or made available in a ﬂash" (1). In a dominating way, technology was progressing and new inventions were seen in American homes. As a matter of fact, many people became able to afford a house, a car, and have a better lifestyle. However, all of a sudden, individuals such as salesmen were not able to afford a lot of products that they were unable to meet the cost of progress of the new America. It was the time when the rich became richer and the poor became poorer.

In this play, Miller attacked the capitalistic system which "depends on the continual encouragement of wants. People must want more and buy more in order to fuel the economy and enable people to work to produce these goods" (Page 103). As Page remarked, the capitalists were in possession of the means of production such as factories and technology while those with working-class origins were paid to produce goods that were sold later on for a proﬁt the capitalist class depended on. In other

39 words, American Capitalism is a class- based system.

The tension that the United States experienced was the result of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The Cold War was not a war of weapons but a war of dominance politically and economically. It made the Americans persist to assert the supremacy of Capitalism over Communism. However, a large part of criticism the critics had was towards Capitalism and its ideology of pursuing proﬁts at the expense of everything else. "Death of a Salesman condemns a social system controlled by wealth, oriented towards the acquisition of money, and indifferent to human beings" (Dukore 19).

Hence, the play emerges as an upshot of certain circumstances. Willy Loman in the play thought that the American Capitalist system will bestow materialistic prosperity to every individual. However, that economic growth brought prosperity only for the high class, while the middle class that the Loman family belongs to did not beneﬁt as a result of this economic growth. In Miller's play, Willy Loman is a representative who struggled to realise those materialistic aspects of the American Dream at his time.

I think that in addition to this background, it is worth looking at the literary context of Miller's play which will help us to understand the details in the play which will be discussed through an analysis of the playwright's recourse to expressionism as a dramatic technique.

Expressionism is a theatrical device whose main aim is to reveal the hidden truths of the characters. Peter Spalding argues that expressionism "is usually deﬁned as being a mode of writing and production in which the aim is to depict inner meaning rather than

40 outward appearance" (64). It emerged in the twentieth century. The drama of that time was equipped with the characteristics of expressionism. The intent of expressionist writers was not to show life as it seemed to be but to focus on the inner life of the protagonists. As Page remarked, expressionist dramatists used the stage to "create a scene symbolic of the workings of a characters mind" (81).

Miller's play successfully employs expressionistic elements to delve deep into the mind of the protagonist, Willy Loman. As the play goes on, one gets more and more involved in the inner world of the protagonist, his thoughts and feelings through the use of expressionism. The play is actually stuffed with effects that stand for things beyond the outer perceptible world. That is to say, the expressionistic stage setting, use of light, sound and music work together to reﬂect the inside world.

In a gradual way, Miller's play unravels as a realistic play empowered by expressionistic characteristics. From the very beginning, we are introduced to the stage directions of the play which describe the setting. Before us, there is the home of Willy Loman which is "wholly or, in some places, partially transparent" (Miller, I. 1). In this way, Miller wants to catch the audience's attention to the structure of the Loman house which surely carries some symbolic meaning. Eric Sterling suggests that "The Loman residence is [...] indicating [...] the failure of Willy" (9). This is actually true because throughout the play he is seen as being unable to succeed.

Moreover, the stage directions state, "Before us is the SALESMAN'S house. We are aware of towering angular shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides" (Miller, I. 1). As the house stands for Willy, this image illustrates that the surrounding buildings represent external forces such

41 as modern civilisation and the city life with its harsh reality. In fact, this shows how Willy Loman is helpless and hopeless in front of the external forces. Sterling notes that "These tall buildings, in juxtaposition with the small Loman house, symbolize Willy's lack of success" (9).

Another point that has to be highlighted concerns the plants. Remembering those old, golden days, Willy angrily said, "The way they boxed us in here. Bricks and windows, windows and bricks [...] The grass don't grow any more, you can't raise a carrot in the backyard" (Miller, I. 6). This reveals his nostalgia for those old, happy and simple days.

Moreover, his love for nature is clear when in the opening scene he recounted describing the nature with lyrical words, "It's so beautiful up there Linda, the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm. I opened the windshield and just let the warm air bathe over me" (Miller, I. 3). Going on farther in this conversation, he added, "This time of year it was lilac and wisteria" (Miller, I. 7). Therefore, one can infer that trees, ﬂowers, and nature in general stand for positive and happy remembrances. The stage directions state, "the entire house and surroundings become covered with leaves" (Miller, I. 16). The audience can notice that each time Willy recollects those past days, the stage directions call for that green cover.

Another remarkable reference form Willy's botanical world is that when there is a crisis at hand, Willy used to shout saying, "The woods are burning" (Miller, I. 28). This phrase is actually linked to the tragedy of the hero in an expressionistic way. Saddik argued about the setting in the play saying that

The ﬂuid, changing setting, for example, represents the increasingly industrial world that emerged after the Second World War and a nostalgia for an era when Willy thought he knew the rules for success, as the urban environment

42 disappears and is replaced with a rural landscape whenever Willy journeys into the past. (Saddik 58)

Death of a Salesman also has an auditory sense. Miller in fact effectively makes use of music and sound which once heard, they evoke an emotion, or picture to be manifested in the protagonist's mind. For example, at the very beginning of the play and before any action takes place, the stage directions state, "A melody is heard, played upon a flute. It is small and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon" (Miller, I. 1). The recurrence of the sound of flute brought to Willy's mind the past time.

As an expressionistic device, the music played on flute here tells the story of a travelling, successful man, Willy's father, who "not only sold flutes; he created them and produced music with them as well" (Sterling 166). In spite of the fact that his father is never seen by the audience, "whenever he is present in Willy's mind a change takes place in the atmosphere of the play [...] this change of atmosphere is brought about by the use of the flute music" (Spalding 39).

In addition, according to the stage directions, the sound of music juxtaposes with the description of those "towering, angular shapes" (Miller, I. 1) where Miller wants to highlight the contrast between the ﬂute which speaks of the pastoral life and those buildings which surround Willy's house on all sides making it appear like a cage.

Miller also prepares his audience for Willy's shift to the past when he writes "Music insinuates itself as the leaves appear" (Miller, I. 16). Spalding also mentions that "to the accompaniment of music, the scene changes. The apartment blocks disappear, the Loman house and garden

43 become sunlit and covered with leaves" (19). So, the sound of music here uncovers the unconscious mind of Willy. Consequently, once Miller's musical themes established, they evoke time frames, values, competing inﬂuences and emotions in Willy Loman's mind. The play actually opens and closes with music. Indeed, the music encompasses the whole action.

In addition to music, Miller successfully employs the expressive power of lighting as a technique to dramatise the various moods of the play. When the curtain rises at the very beginning of the play, the spectators notice that "Only the blue light of the sky falls upon the house and forestage; the surrounding area shows an angry glow of orange" (Miller, I. 1). The introduction of the blue colour may evoke sadness in the imagination of the audience. The angry orange colour refers to towers and buildings of New York. The spectators do not feel comfortable when seeing this colour because it is associated with the city life.

Miller continues to say, "As more light appears, we see a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile - seeming home" (1). As a theatrical technique, lighting focuses on the towering buildings that surround the Loman's house. Miller uses two adjectives "small and fragile" in order to describe the Loman's house. Through the use of light, we are introduced to two contrasting images since the house is small and fragile while everything that surrounds it is huge.

Besides, Miller uses the lighting to tell the audience that the events are taking place in two time frames, present and past, and that the past events occur in Willy's mind since his recollections of past actions must be shown in a way that should be distinct from events taking place in the present time. Bernard F. Dukore exclaims that "instead of blacking out the

44 stage or lowering the curtain, he used a few easily moved properties and ﬂuid lighting effects" (74).

Roberts and Jacobs observe that the stage of the play "is designed to allow ﬂuid transitions between present and past, between current action and memory" (1207). The transition from present to past, for instance, appears in Act One through the use of the light technique by throwing light on Willy while he was in the kitchen and dimming it in the room of the boys. "Their light [Biff and Happy's light] is out. Well before they have ﬁnished speaking, Willy's form is dimly seen below in the darkened kitchen. [...] The apartment houses are fading out, and the entire house and surroundings become covered with leaves" (Miller, I. 15-16).

Roberts and Jacobs mention in this regard that "When memory takes over [...] the apartment houses disappear" (1207). Furthermore, at the end of Act One and as Willy remembers the day of the baseball championship, "He [Biff] comes downstage into a golden pool of light" and he was "like a young god. Hercules – something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him" (Miller, I. 51). This is one of Willy's recollections which illustrates his exaggeration for the past time. It can be said that lighting was brightened up here to work ironically as Willy says, "A star like that, magnificent can never really fade away!" (Miller, I. 51). We know that his star, Biff, faded away before his chance to sparkle came. Finally, in this way we can notice how Expressionism finds its full-fledged application in Death of a Salesman.

After the Second World War, America found itself ﬁghting against the Soviet Union through the so-called 'Cold War'. However, many American playwrights were against the idea that in order to be socially approved,

45 one had to get capitalist success.

Miller's play tackles the concept of the American Dream in a decade when the increased consumption and technological advancement were the dominant power. Originally, the concept of the American Dream is that promise of a land of freedom where opportunity and equality are for all. However, in the boom years after the war, something changed in the ethos of the Americans because of the materialism which advanced rapidly causing the dream to be turned into a distress in different areas of human life. The American Dream actually had undergone a profound shift in meaning which Harold Clurman discussed by arguing that the idea of the American dream transformed from a "land of freedom with opportunity and equality for all" (as quoted by Benziman 23) into a "dream of business success" (23). So, the culture of business changed its concept in the post-war capitalistic America in a way that days of popularity and being liked did not work anymore. At that time one's happiness can be deﬁned by the thickness of his wallet where greed and selﬁshness were the major means to pursue that happiness since the American dream turned into a dream of business success.

Death of a Salesman is one of the most literary pieces that projects the effects of the war very closely reﬂecting the conﬂict between the individual and society. It focuses on the individual's struggle to get a place in the world under the shadow of the requirements of the capitalistic society. Through this play, Miller seeks to portray the social morals and values in the American society in the aftermath of the Second World War.

He wants to bring to light what happens when a man is unable to grasp the forces of life in order to get ahead and not be left behind in that

46 type of society where wealth, income and social status are assigned through competition in the United States of America. Willy Loman, who represents the middle-class individual, could not survive in the capitalistic turmoil. He could not ﬁnd a way to avoid the rat race which caused him to commit suicide as the harmony between him and the new values and ideas was lost in such a civilised society. Holding the concept of "being liked", Willy believed he could succeed, yet he found it difﬁcult to adapt to the new era of modernity where there was no value for a human being.

Willy is under the illusion that success has to do with social popularity. This is his delusion on which he builds his whole life around. He believes in this concept of salesmanship, "the man who makes an appearance in the Business world, the man who creates personal interest is a man who gets ahead" (Miller 21).

Willy's dreams and self-image are not the only reasons behind his failure. Reality is another force that has to do with his downfall. Early in the play Willy's wife, Linda, recommends Willy to ask Howard, the manager of the company where he works, for a non-travelling job in New York city since he has turned 63 and is unable to travel for selling. However, his hope to get a job in New York is shattered by the reality that Howard ﬁres him. He tells him that "there just is no spot here for you" (Miller, II. 60). So, Willy's thirty-ﬁve-year service in the company of Wagner ends vainly. After this long service, he expects that he will be rewarded by a job in New York but after facing the reality, his dream is destroyed because he is discharged as soon as he is no longer of use for the company. On this point, Saddik wrote: "Death of a Salesman, Miller's best-known play, is concerned with the character of Willy Loman, an

47 aging salesman whose dreams of excessive wealth and respect within the American capitalist system are shattered by its reality" (56-57). In fact, he is ﬁred as if he were unsuccessful, "I don't want you to represent us" (Miller, II. 63).

In this very scene Miller does not really want to criticise the dismissal itself but the abuses of capitalistic system which has no respect for Willy's long years of service. He is ﬁred due to the inhumane nature of Capitalism. In the expulsion scene, Willy says to Howard, "you can't eat the orange and throw the peel away a man is not a piece of fruit" (Miller, II. 61). In fact, Willy's humane treatment is irrelevant to the way Howard thinks.

His attitude towards business shows that he is aware of the fact that business in 1948 is "all cut and dried, and there's no chance for bringing friendship to bear - or personality " (Miller, II. 61). He misses the time when "there was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it" (Miller, II. 61). Willy fails to understand that "business is business", that in such an industrial society, when the machine does not perform well, it can not retain a place. After Willy's complaint that salesmanship has become "cut and dried", Howard answers by saying, "I can't take blood from a stone" (Miller, II. 61). It is this culture which requires eminence in a capitalistic system that turns men into machines. "Although he has worked hard all his life, he is now reduced to begging his former boss' son, Howard, who has taken over the business" (Saddik 57).

Being bred on the old values, Willy Loman is unable to adapt to the new ones of business. We see him in the restaurant yelling at his sons: "the woods are burning, boys, you understand? There's a big blaze going on all around. I was ﬁred today" (Miller, II. 83). He was unsuccessful

48 during that time because he could not adapt to the new environment of business since his old-fashioned techniques of salesmanship were no longer common. Miller implies that the reason behind Willy's failure is what Brenda Murphy calls, "a deep cultural dissonance in the messages he has heard throughout his life" (10). He believes that the keys to success are popularity, charisma and being well-liked.

The play can be seen as a symbolic criticism against the worship of material success. Willy is unable to adapt to the new climate of business where money is the most valuable thing. Through Howard, the audience can notice the change in the vision of the employer towards more proﬁt. He is wholy concerned with his farm.

Howard is a materialistic and utilitarian person who does not appreciate social relations. He is the son of Wagner, the thing which makes a big difference between them showing Howard as a ruthless capitalist. The gap between these two generations explains the change in values. Willy describes Howard's father, Wagner, as a "masterful man". On the contrary, Howard does not value the hard work of his employees. The comparison between the father and the son illustrates the changes in the American business society after the period of prosperity which caused the employer's vision towards their employees to be transformed. As capitalists, they only seek proﬁt with less appreciation to social relations and to the effort that the employee exerted for the sake of the employer's business.

This harsh reality led Willy to fall into the world of illusions, so he gave false justiﬁcations to his family saying, "[t] hey don't need me in New York. I'm the New England man. I'm vital in New England" (Miller, I. 4). This is one of the illusions that he created for himself. The need to be

49 well-liked is so strong that he lies to his family that he is popular and vital in New England.

Indeed, Willy could not face reality, that is why he escaped into the world of delusions which caused him to tell lies or exaggerate the truth. For instance, he told his sons, Biff and Happy, that he can park anywhere in Boston and that the police will look after it. He was reluctant to live in a world where his illusion of being well-liked did not ﬁt anymore in a competitive society where people got obsessed with materialism and technology and where the battle of transformation was taking place. He went actually beyond time and frequently moved upon the past either to escape from reality or to seek refuge. As Bigsby mentioned that:

Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman, is pulled even more back into the past of his own imagining, before the city encroached on his freedom, before the wire recorder cut across a simple act of human communication, before the automobile threatened his life and the world became such a mystery to him" (32).

In fact, his dream to be well-liked was inspired from Dave Singleman, a travelling salesman, whom he had met many years ago when he was young that he said, "I realized that selling was the greatest career that man could want" (Miller, II. 61). He, all his life, dreamt to become like Singleman, "remembered and loved and helped by so many different people" (Miller, II. 61). Saddik said that "Willy claims that he chose his career after meeting an eighty-four-year old salesman who made his living in his hotel room, wearing his 'green velvet slippers' and calling buyers who 'remembered and loved and helped' him" (59).

However, all his attempts to prove his worth were in vain that he lived in a world that did not see him. The image he created for himself was

50 also another barrier that prevented him from accepting the reality and hence, blocking his way to success. He could only think of himself as an important and well-liked individual. For Bigsby, he observed that Willy was "desperately clinging to the conviction that he is 'well liked' because this is the only valuation which he can accept as having any value" (125).

By reason of his illusion of being well-liked, he brought up his sons teaching them to cash in on their personal attractiveness. He is the one who puts all his faith in personality. His obsession with the idea of "personal attractiveness" is obvious when he speaks to his wife, Linda, saying, "Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such personal attractiveness gets lost" (Miller, I. 6). For him, the American Dream is to be able to achieve success by being a well-liked and charismatic one with the right smile.

Moreover, his expectation of a massive funeral collides with reality. He thinks that when he dies, his funeral will be attended by so many different people from all over the country and this is shown when he tells his imaginary brother, Ben, as he is hallucinating that:

Ben, that funeral will be massive! [...] that boy [Biff] will be thunderstuck, Ben, because he never realized — I am known! [...] Ben, and he'll see it with his eyes once and for all. He'll see what I am, Ben! He's in for a shock, that boy! (Miller, II. 100)

One can notice that his dream of a massive funeral inspired from that of Dave Singleman, which he had told Howard about: "when he [Singleman] died hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral" (Miller, II. 61). However, later on, he is seen as a forgotten man because of the poor number of attendants shown in the requiem scene, namely, Linda, Biff, Happy, Charley and Bernard. Linda wondered saying, "why didn't anyone

51 come? [...] But where are all the people he knew? Maybe they blame him". Answering her wonder, Charley says, "Naa. It's a rough world, Linda. They wouldn't blame him" (Miller 110). This is shown in the requiem scene which illustrates Willy's tragedy. Being unable to keep pace with the man of the American commercial civilisation, Willy Loman committed suicide in the race of the survival of the ﬁttest.

By reason of his travels, technological advancement and his failure to achieve his dream, Willy felt lonely, isolated and discontented that he was unable to be changed and harmonised in this materialistic and capitalistic society. He hated the process of social and economic changes of the industrialised world, he says, "The way they boxed us in here, Bricks and windows, windows and bricks" (Miller, I. 6). We notice that he is suffocated with the crammed atmosphere of the city and unable to get on well with the fast moving world.

Willy Loman is a man who has a romantic heart. This point emerges when he described the nature of the country, "It's so beautiful up there Linda, the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm" (Miller, I. 3). Longing for the life in the country, he says, "remember those two beautiful elm trees out there [...] They should've arrested the builder for cutting those down" (Miller, I. 6). He also says, "More and more, I think of those days Linda. This time last year it was lilac and wisteria" (Miller, I. 7). Moreover, describing the atmosphere in the country, he says, "The grass don't grow anymore, you can't raise a carrot in the backyard" (Miller, I. 6). These bursts of nostalgia illustrate his love for nature as well as his attachment to the life of the country with its simplicity and freshness. They also show his discontent with the life in such a capitalisic society and the destiny of the individual.

52 Close inspection reveals that for lower classes, to own home is considered as the climax of their dream. This is highlighted in the play:

Linda: Forgive me, dear, I can't cry, I don't know what it is, I can't cry. I don't understand it, why did you ever do that? Help me Willy, I can't cry. It seems to me that you're just on another trip. I keep expecting you. Willy, dear, I can't cry. Why did you do it? I search and search and I search, and I can't understand it, Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. [...] [A sob rises in her throat ] we're free and clear. [Sobbing more fully, released] we're free... we're free... we're free... (112)

As the play goes on, the spectators can notice that they have no idea about what Willy sells and this can actually reﬂect Miller's purpose. In other words, the idea does not revolve around the goods that Willy sells but on the concept of salesmanship. In fact, Miller is asked about the goods that Willy sells to answer by saying "himself" (Miller 28). That is to say, he attempts to sell himself in order to buy respect.

At the very beginning of the play, we see Willy cross the stage carrying two suitcases. This image of him carrying heavy suitcases which deplete his power distinctly symbolises his need to be well-liked and respected by society. Furthermore, this burden of his pursuits is weighing him down and ﬁnally leads to his suicide. Actually, he thinks that by committing suicide his family will see his worth by the insurance money that they will receive as well as the hundreds of people who will come and show respect by attending his funeral, yet, as I mentioned before that the only ones who come are his family, Linda , Biff, Happy in addition to Charley and Bernard.

After getting his burden down, his wife, Linda, gets out of her bed to talk to him. Let us consider the following conversation between Willy and

53 Linda.

Linda [hearing Willy outside the bedroom, calls with some trepidation]: Willy!

Willy: It's all right. I came back.

Linda: why? what happened? [Slight pause.] Did something happen, Willy?

Willy: No, nothing happened.

Linda: You didn't smash the car, did you?

Willy: [with casual irritation]: I said nothing happened. Didn't you hear me?

Linda: Don't you feel well?

Willy: I'm tired to death. (Miller, I. 4)

By asking Willy several questions, Linda drives the audience to focus on him. At ﬁrst, he tries to keep her questions away, but her insistence forces him to answer in a routine manner:

Willy: [...] I couldn't make it. I just couldn't make it, Linda.

Linda: [very carefully, delicately]: Where were you all day? You look terrible.

Willy: I got as far as a little above Yonkers. I stopped for a cup of coffee. Maybe it was the coffee.

Linda: What?

Willy [after a pause]: I suddenly couldn't drive any more. (Miller, I. 4-5)

We gradually see him narrate the details of the day. In fact, by staging the scene, Miller wants to shed light on the "isolated Willy". First of all, he pushes her questions away trying to avoid answering, to be seen later on

54 starting to reveal his mental idleness. However, her response "Where were you all day?" as an answer to his "I couldn't make it. I just couldn't make it, Linda" illustrates that she tries to stay away from the situation by changing the subject. The way she avoids the implications of his words later on makes him retreat from confession "I stopped for a cup of coffee. Maybe it was the coffee".

Linda [helpfully]: Oh. Maybe it was the steering again. [...]

Willy: No, it's me, it's me (Miller, I. 5).

After his confession "I suddenly could not drive any more", she comes up with another "avoidance answer" by saying, "Maybe it was the steering again". As the scene progresses, we see him reject her answers, "No, it's me, it's me". The aim of the scene is to dramatise how Willy becomes isolated inspite of his talking to his wife that he tries to share with her his problem and we see her avoid the intended meaning by avoiding his intent when she comes up with another reason, "Maybe it's your glasses" (Miller, I. 5).

Biographically speaking, people were the inspiration for Miller to write his Pulitzer Award winning play whose main character, Willy Loman, was based on Miller's uncle, Manny Newman, who was in favour of showing conﬁdence rejecting the appearance of failure. We can say that Manny Newman

Saw everything as some kind of competition that he and his family had to win. He was also prone to black moods and bouts of despair, and probably committed suicide. Manny's eldest child, Buddy, like Willy's younger son Biff, was athletic and popular, and the younger son, Abby, like Willy's younger son Hap, was a ladies' man. (Abbotson 59-60)

55 Willy Loman is an individual who struggles to make his American dream come true and to make sense of his place in the society. He is the man who attempts to assert his identity in the society where the rapid urbanisation and the decadent values of humanity spoiled his soul constantly. For Miller, Willy's anguished awareness of his false position in the world makes him tragic and heroic. Therefore, Willy's incessant obsession with the profoundness of his beliefs drives him to sacriﬁce his life to corroborate his signiﬁcance.

56 Chapter Four

Look Back in Anger and Death of a Salesman: A Comparative Analysis

Look Back in Anger and Death of a Salesman explore the external forces which affect the individuals. In fact, society is one of the sources that plays an important role in the process of the individuals' lives. That is why in order to understand Jimmy and Willy and the conﬂicts which they have to cope with, their societies where they live should be examined ﬁrst. The discontentment of those individuals with the social norms and society in general makes them frustrated since they are unable to adapt to the values at their time.

Osborne visualises the post-war British society as one dominated by apathy. For Jimmy, the characters around him are asleep and cannot wake up from their deep sleep. So his anger is derived from his sense of enthusiasm. It is the case with the whole society, as he said: "Why do I spend nine pence on that damned paper every week? Nobody reads it except me. Nobody can be bothered" (Osborne, I. 9). He utters invective speeches against everyone and everything. He reproaches his wife and friends as they have "no beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm" (Osborne, I. 11). He feels that stagnancy dominates the society and people who are in deep sleep cannot wake up from their "delicious sloth" (Osborne, I. 9).

Jimmy Porter's awareness that the general public mood is apathetic causes him to frustrate owing to the lack of response from those around

57 him. Jimmy has a desire to live a vibrant life so in that way we can notice the difference between his passion and the stagnant society around him.

In contrast, Miller in Death of a Salesman dramatises the rapidity in the post-war American society. Actually, the play was staged in a period when the situation of economy in America showed a great prosperity. It was the time of the survival of the ﬁttest. In such a capitalistic society, there was a desire for material goods. Miller dramatised his society as one where material things came ﬁrst.

For Willy, in order to achieve success, the key is to be well-liked. This is due to Dave Singleman who inspired him to be a salesman. He was a well-liked and successful salesman but Willy failed to understand that times had changed and to be well-liked is foreign to such a capitalistic society. The spectators can see him struggle to achieve his dream, however, he could not achieve success because it is beyond his capability. Willy's values are quite different from those around him and this makes him fall apart from his society.

The aim of Miller's play is to confront the problems of the common man in a capitalistic social system. For Howard, the relationship between him and his employees is based on business. For him there is no space for respect, gratitude, or loyalty in contrast to Willy who "was in the ﬁrm when Howard's father used to carry him in his arms" (Miller, II. 59). Miller pictured the society in Death of a Salesman as one where monetary value, wealth and society are intertwined together. In such a capitalistic system, money and wealth come ﬁrst, there is no room for human relations; because the ultimate aim is to win the race.

Being written in a period of transition, Look Back in Anger dramatised

58 an authentic picture of the individual in society at that time. In other words, by reﬂecting the alienation and the isolation of the post-war generation, Osborne contributed in a successful way to English literature. The youthful generation of post-war Britain was struggling against the society. Its rebellion against those social institutions is vital, as Ibrahim Yerebakan remarks:

One of the best indications of his [Jimmy Porter] isolation from the accepted social norms is that his higher education did not give him a position in which his qualification would be useful [...] He has no confidence in any of the established institutions because he finds in them a real hypocrisy and insincerity. (182)

Jimmy lashed out about his alienation from his own society where he had not a meaningful role. He did not ﬁnd a place to be ﬁt in. He is intelligent, educated and married to an upper-class woman which made him confused about the class to which he belongs. Emine Tecimer argues:

Jimmy Porter is regarded as an embodiment of the frustrations of a particular age and class especially the generation of young men who have been expecting to leave behind their lower-class origins by using higher education. Jimmy is educated beyond his social roots; however, he cannot get what he expects from his education. Despite his university degree he has worked as an advertising salesman. Then he starts to run a sweet stall for a living which is also not a proper job for a graduate man (11).

What happened is that the government founded "white-tile" universities, which allude to the newest but least prestigious universities in Britain, where those working-class students had the opportunity to learn. However, this level of education did not make individuals with high class and this illustrates how the education system contributes to the youths'

59 feeling of alienation. Although Jimmy was educated, the opportunity was preserved for the children of the Establishment. For Jimmy, the reason behind his deprived rightful place is his working-class origin.

According to the British society where he lived, the days when the class system ruled had gone, but the fact is that the process of class division was still the dominant power. Therefore, Jimmy verbally attacked those new universities since the situation did not meet the aspirations of those students who thought that those universities will get them "a better life" and this is actually one of the causes behind their frustration in the post-war period and Jimmy's feeling of alienation as well.

Jimmy feels alienated from society and his wife also. He is a vibrant working-class man who has to adapt to that type of featureless life. His alienation from her is due to her inefﬁcacy and her indifferent attitudes. He attacked her with angry words to get a reaction. Moreover, because he went to Sandhurst, Alison's brother, Nigel, is already a man who had a position in power in spite of the fact that he is stupid. Jimmy detests him owing to his connection to the world. Criticising Jimmy, Helena said: "There's no place for people like that any longer [...] He doesn't know where he is, or where he's going" (Osborne, III. ii. 84).

Similarly, Miller in Death of a Salesman dramatises the capitalistic and materialistic society which led to the alienation of the common individual. Throughout the play, the sense of alienation is experienced by that individual. The spectators can notice that alienation and isolation are the core of the play which led to Willy's suicide at the end.

Willy Loman is an epitome of the ordinary man who is alienated by a capitalistic society which is controlled by money. Being in such a

60 materialistic world results in his feeling of alienation. From the beginning of the play we see Willy get back home after a long trip "tired to death" (Miller, I. 2). Linda offers to make him a cheese sandwich, she said: "it's whipped" (6) which gets him angry and says: "why do you get American when I like Swiss?" (6). This actually irritates him feeling that he is contradicted which comes out with his complaining against this modern America, "The street is lined with cars. There's not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass don't grow any more, you can't raise a carrot in the back yard" (6). Remembering the nature of those old and simple days he said: "Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there?" (6) and that "This time of year it was lilac and wisteria" (7).

However, talking about the current days, he said: "Smell the stink from that apartment house!" (7). Willy in this way tries to show the difference between nature and industry. In this world, he is discontented with the quality of that life, a frustration which contributed to his alienation.

Moreover, the isolation sense was brought about by the technological progress. In other words, as a common individual, his alienation was by reason of living in this technological society and his interaction with it and the condition that is in this society. For example, the scene when Willy was ﬁred after asking Howard for a non-travelling job illustrates how Howard is preoccupied with technology, he said: "I tell, Willy, I'm gonna take my camera, and my bandsaw, and all my hobbies, and out they go. This is the most fascinating relaxation I ever found" (Miller, II. 58).

Bigsby mentioned that the main theme in the American drama in the twentieth century is "alienation: [...] from his [man] environment, from his fellow/man and from himself" (125). Furthermore, in this scene,

61 Howard's interest in his tape recorder is more than in Willy's issue which he came with. Sterling said that "From the very beginning of their encounter, Howard shows far more interest in his new technological toy—his superb tape recorder—than in the troubled human being who is desperately trying to communicate with him in person" (70).

The play emerges as a criticism for the worship of material success. Willy is unable to accept the reality and cannot adapt to this materialistic and capitalistic society where the survival is of the ﬁttest. Here the human being lives for the sake of survival instead of living for the sake of living. To be in this capitalistic society means either to be the same as Howard or to seek refuge in loneliness by being alienated.

Willy felt that he is an "outsider" who could not be a part of this society and who had no choice but to die. Howard made no consideration to Willy's thirty-four year of service because in this industrial world there is no place for those who do not perform well. Willy Loman is ignored and alienated in this capitalistic society. Azmi Azam argued that Capitalism is that system which needs working-class individuals to work and to make proﬁts that the upper-class people depend on to live a luxurious life.

Means of production by themselves produce nothing -- labor power is needed for production to take place. A capitalist society tries to brutalize the mass people because it needs labour in cheap price, so Loman-like people are needed in such a society to make the luxury and comfort enjoyed by the Howard-like oppressors. And, at the end, the contribution of Lomans is forgotten because they are no more needed when they are at the end of their service, and of their age. (116)

In addition to the alienation of the characters, nostalgia is one of the dimensions which stirs up the feeling of anger in Jimmy Porter. He is

62 nostalgic for a better time in life. He feels a kind of nostalgia for past time. In other words, he yearns for that era when Britain was the world superpower. Actually, the plays of Osborne and his contemporaries were derived from the social, political and economic conditions in Britain in the ﬁfties through which they tried to make their audiences aware of their surroundings.

Osborne's play emerges as a rebellion on the English stage. Rebellato marks that "new, youthful audiences ﬂocked to the Royal Court to hear Jimmy Porter express their own hopes and fears" (1). Therefore, Porter's anger is one of the features through which nostalgia is felt. One can notice that the characters' disappointment is logical since the situation of post-war Britain is deteriorated on the world stage. After the war, the British economy was stagnant and Britain was bankrupt. In addition, the cities were bombed which left the country's young men disempowered. Furthermore, the British Empire lost its political power. Britain lost its colonies (India declared its independence in 1947). Moreover, the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 "had an obvious effect on British [...] self-esteem" (Rabey 29).

For Jimmy, in Britain in the 1950s, "there aren't any good, brave causes left" (Osborne, III. i. 78). He expressed his regret for the British empire saying:

still, even I regret its somehow [...] If you've no world of your own, it's rather pleasant to regret the passing of someone else's. I must be getting sentimental. But I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American age - unless you're an American of course. (Osborne, I. 11)

Jimmy has nostalgia for those old days because as a part of his generation, he has to face and cope with the troubles that caused by the

63 Second World War.

Nostalgia found its way to Alison's father, Colonel Redfern, who served in India. While he was reminiscing about the Edwardian age when Britain was colonising India, he felt overwhelmed with nostalgia. He reminisced about those old days before he went to India in 1914 saying:

The England I remember was the one I left in 1914, and I was happy to go on remembering it that way. Beside, I had the Maharajah's army to command - that was my world, and I loved it, all of it [...] I think the last day the sun shone was when that dirty little train steamed out of that crowded, suffocating Indian station. (Osborne, II. II. 62)

Therefore Jimmy and Colonel Redfern are nostalgic for that time when Britain was stronger politically. In fact, for Osborne, those happy days were in the past and they are no longer there. That is why Jimmy looks back angrily as a result of his nostalgia. Hoggart stated that nostalgia is a strong reason for Jimmy's anger (246).

Likewise, the same emotion is arisen in Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman looks back nostalgically as one lives in the past while he is in present just to seek refuge in those happier days from this harsh reality. Describing the nature at that time, he said: "This time of year it was lilac and wisteria" (Miller, I. 7). It is clear how nostalgic he is to that time of nature before the dominance of the industrial world. As Sterling expressed: "In hindsight, even his description of the ﬂowers in their yard seems an indication not of a simple delight in the blooms themselves but of a nostalgia for a better time" (139).

Miller pictured that time as natural in an attempt to raise our nostalgia for it before the industry had replaced the human beings and to

64 empathise with Willy for his distaste for the industrial world. For Sterling, Death of a Salesman "encourages us in our nostalgia for an organic, humanist, natural social order, in which human beings worked in harmony with one another and with nature. It invites us to share in Willy's disgust with industrial modernity" (118).

This is clear, as shown in the play when Willy said nostalgically:

The street is lined with cars. There's not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass don't grow any more, you can't raise a carrot in the back yard. They should've had a law against apartment houses. Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? When I and Biff hung the swing between them? [...] They should've arrested the builder for cutting those down. They massacred the neighborhood. [Lost] More and more I think of those days, Linda. (Miller, I. 6-7)

Moreover, when he says, "the way they boxed us in here" (6), he has that feeling of nostalgia which contradicts his description of nature. Besides, portraying that nothing will grow any more in the garden would be a symbol of Willy's failure to achieve his dream. Dukore argues that "Beyond the contrast to urbanisation, the garden suggests that Willy's seeds cannot take root or develop" (24).

From the beginning of the play, after returning tired because of his trip, he escaped from this harsh reality by remembering those happy days when his sons were young:

Biff: where'd you go this time, Dad? Gee, we were lonesome for you.

Willy [pleased, puts an arm around each boy and they come down to the aparon]: Lonesome, heh?

Biff: Missed you every minute. (Miller, I. 18)

65 Being in such a capitalistic society where every individual works for his own ends, Willy emerges as a young individual full of hope to achieve his dream before his picture as a failure man is illustrated. "Willy: [...] Tell you a secret, boys? [...] someday I'll have my own business" (Miller, I. 18).

Furthermore, the way Miller employs expressionistic devices charges the feeling of nostalgia. For example, the sound of ﬂute music which appears at the beginning of the play juxtaposes with the description of the apartments in this industrial world. In this way, Miller wants the spectators to delve deep into Willy's mind in order to understand his true nature.

Through the use of music, Miller was able to reflect Willy's nostalgia for the nature and rusticity of that time. "A melody is heard played upon a flute. It is small and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon" (Miller, I. 1). The sound of flute here is peaceful in opposition to the description of the industrial world. Miller said: "Before us is the SALESMAN'S house. We are aware of towering, angular shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides" (1). Therefore, this juxtaposition emphasises Willy's nostalgia for the past which is contradicted with this harsh reality. The sound of flute is associated with the nostalgic sense as a symbol of happy past time.

The sense of nostalgia is also felt in the scene of Howard in the ofﬁce when Willy came to him to ask for a non-travelling job. In this very scene, Willy told Howard that "In those days there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it. Today, it's all cut and dried, and there's no chance for bringing friendship to bear" (Miller, II. 61). It is natural that Willy looked back nostalgically when the culture of business had a completely different attitude.

66 Willy has turned into a relic of a way of salesmanship long ago, and consequently, he must be discarded immediately, even though he is already sixty-three years old and about to retire, a personal fact that the new capitalist ethics no longer deems relevant. (Sterling 70)

Moreover, Willy tried to deceive Howard by manipulating and playing on nostalgia. Sterling marks: "he ineffectually attempts to acquire his desird ofﬁce job through playing on nostalgia and lying to Howard by claiming that he was in the ofﬁce when Old Man Wagner announced that his newborn son would be named Howard" (6).

In short, these two plays reveal that the society where the individual lives is the main reason behind her/his frustration and discontentment. That is why, Osborne and Miller use the stage as a public platform to show the reality of their societies in an attempt to make the readers/spectators think and feel and in order to reform those societies and to call for justice through their spokesmen.

67 Chapter Five

Conclusion

Osborne and Miller view the stage as a public platform where a serious business on social issues was projected to stress that man should be less isolated and more comfortable with his surroundings. As shown throughout their plays, drama can be considered as a school that people learn from.

Look Back in Anger and Death of a Salesman focus on the life of the common individual as a major character, a man who becomes ﬁt to be the hero of the play. Both dramatists criticise people with upper-class origin as they are the ones who have control on the system in opposition to the common individual who is calling for a better treatment and improved situation in the society in which she/he lives. Hence, they depended on Realism as a literary approach in order to mirror an authentic image of the British and American life at that time.

Osborne's play reﬂects his dissatisfaction with the world around him after WWII. So, this dissatisfaction was the dominating sensation for young men after the Second World War can be really seen in Look Back in Anger.

Losing its position as a world super-power led post-war Britain to be at the mercy of America. In addition to the process of Americanisation, 1947 was the year which marked the end of British Empire since it is the time when the colony of India declared its independence. Moreover, the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 denoted the loss of its status which was taken

68 over by the United States of America and the Soviet Union. In pungent rhetoric, Osborne vocalises the voice of the young Englishmen with feelings of discontentment and anger due to their inability to control world chaos. Kimball King suggests:

Much of Osborne's original anger was directed at England's compromised power and inﬂuence following the World War II. Bitter disappointment over the impending Suez crisis in 1956. The rapidly progressing loss of Empires and the Americanization of the west were palpable inﬂuences on the mood of the playwright. (179)

Look Back in Anger was the stimulus that stimulated a number of young playwrights to appear on stage. In other words, many working-class writers were stirred by Osborne's play to express themselves and the social class they belong to by writing plays. All of these writers were actually in contact with the problems of their class. Conseqently, Osborne was the ﬁrst to expose the ills of his society by starting a new wave of English drama as an epitome of angry young writer. The Angry Young Men in truth made a great contribution to English literature in the 1950s.

It is not out of expectation to see Miller write about the contemporary issues of his society. He has tackled mostly the social issues of his day in his plays and this is the case with his Pulitzer winner play Death of a Salesman. This play depicts the after-effects of the Second World War spotlighting the conﬂict of the individual with himself and with his society and the result of running after the American Dream of success.

Death of a Salesman portrays the life of this individual as an obsessed salesman who hallucinates with the philosophy of the American Dream to be disappointed and commit suicide at the end. The Americans

69 actually still strive to achieve that dream which has been sewn into the fabric of their identity. For them, success is a requirement of life that each individual regardless of his being must struggle to achieve. Hence, the search of the main character in the play, Willy Loman, for success is the main idea in the play.

Miller's play projects the suffering of Willy Loman as an ordinary common man in his society. He centres on the negative psychological effects of that corrupted dream which affected the way people think. This play reﬂects Miller's concern for the common individual. It draws attention to the worries and aspirations of all the society in which the ordinary individual, who can be seen as a representative, is no exception.

The American society requires eminence where a man is judged by the possessions he has and by how much he can spend only, the thing that led the individuals to be turned into machines, that they sacriﬁce themselves for their obsessions.

In this study, we have observed how the pressure to gain material wealth corrupted people and the common man got entrapped when he failed to have a grip on the forces of life. So, taking the dream to his heart with a great desire to achieve it led Willy Loman to his doom. Throughout his life, he was running after a mirrage, worshipping the goddess of success, yet he was unsuccessful in his attempts to catch it.

One of the major problems nowadays is the absence of human values in the world where anarchy is loosed upon. There is no place actually for the basic human values in the American environment. It can be said that the reason behind such loss of values has to do with the concept of success where the rat race is taking place.

70 As the play goes on, the audience can notice Miller's conﬂict with the American milieu which took pride in being the richest and the most powerful society during that period. However, due to the progress of the process of materialism, this in most cases causes distress in different areas of human life where the gap between the moneyed and the poor was widening. Actually, Willy's mind disintegrated under the pressure of the enormous forces as he was full of hope to achieve that dream but at the end he ended up with empty hands. His failure brought him suffering and isolation which could elicit unusual measures of pathos from any audience. In this regard, Miller says:

My concept of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. (11)

Miller's passionate concern for ordinary individuals and their values reﬂected his view that attention must be paid to all men and those who are common or ordinary ones are no exception. Miller's play tackles the worries, problems and failures of Willy Loman as an ordinary man at his time.

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77 ُﻣﻠ ﺨﺺ

ﺗﺴﺘﻜﺸﻒ ﻫﺬه اﻟﺮﺳﺎﻟﺔ ﺷﺆون اﻟﻔﺮد ﻓﻲ ﺑﺮﻳﻄﺎﻧﻴﺎ وأﻣﺮﻳﻜﺎ ﻓﻲ أﻋﻘﺎب اﻟﺤﺮب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﻴﺔ اﻟﺜﺎﻧﻴﺔ.

وﺗﺘﺨﻴﺮ ﻫﺬه اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ ﻣﺴﺮﺣﻴﺘﻲ (اﻟﻨﻈﺮ إﻟﻰ ﻣﺎﻓﺎت ﺑﻐﻀﺐ) ﻟﺠﻮن أوزﺑﻮرن و (ﻣﻮت ﺑﺎﺋﻊ

ﻣﺘﺠﻮل) ﻵرﺛﺮ ﻣﻴﻠﺮ. ﺗﻈﻬﺮ اﻟﻤﺴﺮﺣﻴﺔ اﻷوﻟﻰ ﺑﻮﺻﻔﻬﺎ ﻣﻤﺜﻠﺔ ﻟﺤﺮﻛﺔ اﻟﺸﺒﺎب اﻟﻐﺎﺿﺐ اﻟﺘﻲ ﺗﻌﺒﺮ ﻋﻦ

ﺳﺨﻂ أﻓﺮاد اﻟﻄﺒﻘﺔ اﻟﻌﺎﻣﻠﺔ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻮﺿﻊ ﻓﻲ ﺑﺮﻳﻄﺎﻧﻴﺎ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺨﻤﺴﻴﻨﻴﺎت ﻣﻦ اﻟﻘﺮن اﻟﻤﺎﺿﻲ. ﻳﺘﺸﻜﻰ

ﺟﻴﻤﻲ ﺑﻮرﺗﺮ ، ﺑﻮﺻﻔﻪ ﻓﺮد ًا ﻣﻦ اﻟﻄﺒﻘﺔ اﻟﻌﺎﻣﻠﺔ ، ﻣﻦ وﻋﻮد اﻟﺪوﻟﺔ ﺑﻌﺪ اﻟﺤﺮب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﻴﺔ اﻟﺜﺎﻧﻴﺔ. ﻟﺬا

ُﺗﻈ ِﻬﺮ اﻟﻤﺴﺮﺣﻴﺔ أﺳﺒﺎب ﻏﻀﺒﻪ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻣﺤﻴﻄﻪ.

ﺗﻌﺮض ﻣﺴﺮﺣﻴﺔ (ﻣﻮت ﺑﺎﺋﻊ ﻣﺘﺠﻮل) ﻵرﺛﺮ ﻣﻴﻠﺮ آﺛﺎر اﻟﺤﺮب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﻴﺔ اﻟﺜﺎﻧﻴﺔ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻤﺠﺘﻤﻊ اﻟﺬي

ﺷﻬﺪ اﻟﺮﺧﺎء واﻟﺘﻘﺪم اﻟﺘﻜﻨﻮﻟﻮﺟﻲ. ﻏﻴﺮ أن اﻟﻔﺮد ﻣﻦ اﻟﻄﺒﻘﺔ اﻟﻮﺳﻄﻰ وﺟﺪ ﻧﻔﺴﻪ ﻋﺎﻟﻘ ًﺎ وﺳﻂ

اﻟﺘﻘﺪم اﻟﻤﺎدي. ﻟﺬﻟﻚ ﺑﺮز وﻳﻠﻲ ﻟﻮﻣﺎن ﺑﻮﺻﻔﻪ ﻓﺮد ًا ﻣﻦ اﻟﻄﺒﻘﺔ اﻟﻮﺳﻄﻰ ﻣﻬﻮوس ﻓﻲ اﻟﺤﻠﻢ

اﻷﻣﺮﻳﻜﻲ اﻟﺬي اﻗﺘﻀﻰ ﺑﺄن اﻟﻔﺮد ذا اﻟﺠﺎذﺑﻴﺔ واﻟﺸﻬﺮة ﺳﻴﻜﻮن ﻗﺎدر ًا ﻋﻠﻰ ﻓﺘﺢ ﺑﺎب اﻟﻨﺠﺎح ، ﻟﻜﻨﻪ

ﻳﺠﺪ ﻧﻔﺴﻪ ، ﻟﻸﺳﻒ ، ﻏﻴﺮ ﻗﺎدر ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺘﻼؤم ﻓﻲ ﻫﺬا اﻟﻤﺠﺘﻤﻊ اﻟﻤﺎدي واﻟﺮأﺳﻤﺎﻟﻲ وﻧﺮاه ﻳﻘﻮم

ﺑﺎﻻﻧﺘﺤﺎر ﻓﻲ اﻟﻨﻬﺎﻳﺔ.

ﺗﺮﻛﺰ اﻟﻤﺴﺮﺣﻴﺘﺎن ﺑﺈﻳﺠﺎز ﻋﻠﻰ ﺣﻴﺎة اﻟﻔﺮد اﻟﻌﺎدي ﺑﻮﺻﻔﻪ ﺷﺨﺼ ًﺎ رﺋﻴﺴ ًﺎ ﻳﺪﻋﻮ إﻟﻰ ﺣﺎل أﻓﻀﻞ ﻓﻲ

اﻟﻤﺠﺘﻤﻊ. اﻋﺘﻤﺪ ﻛﻼ اﻟﻜﺎﺗﺒﻴﻦ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻮاﻗﻌﻴﺔ ﻟﺘﻘﺪﻳﻢ اﻟﺼﻮرة اﻟﺤﻘﻴﻘﻴﺔ ﻟﻠﻤﺠﺘﻤﻌﺎت اﻟﻤﺎدﻳﺔ ﻓﻲ

ﻫﺎﺗﻴﻦ اﻟﻤﺴﺮﺣﻴﺘﻴﻦ ﺑﺎﻹﺿﺎﻓﺔ إﻟﻰ ﻣﻌﺎﻧﺎة اﻷﻓﺮاد اﻟﻌﺎدﻳﻴﻦ. ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ اﻟﺒﻌﺚ ﻛﻠﻴﺔ اﻵداب واﻟﻌﻠﻮم اﻹﻧﺴﺎﻧﻴﺔ ﻗﺴﻢ اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻹﻧﻜﻠﻴﺰﻳﺔ

اﻟﻔﺮد واﻟﻤﺠﺘﻤﻊ ﻓﻲ ﻣﺴﺮﺣﻴﺘﻲ اﻟﻨﻈﺮ إﻟﻰ ﻣﺎﻓﺎت ﺑﻐﻀﺐ ل أوزﺑﻮرن و ﻣﻮت ﺑﺎﺋﻊ ﻣﺘﺠﻮل ل ﻣﻴﻠﺮ

رﺳﺎﻟﺔ أﻋﺪت ﻟﻨﻴﻞ درﺟﺔ اﻟﻤﺎﺟﺴﺘﻴﺮ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺪراﺳﺎت اﻷدﺑﻴﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻗﺴﻢ اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻹﻧﻜﻠﻴﺰﻳﺔ

إﻋﺪاد: ﻓﺮح اﻟﺴﺒﺎﻋﻲ

إﺷﺮاف:

اﻷﺳﺘﺎذ اﻟﺪﻛﺘﻮر اﻟﻴﺎس ﺧﻠﻒ

٢٠١٩ ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ اﻟﺒﻌﺚ ﻛﻠﻴﺔ اﻵداب واﻟﻌﻠﻮم اﻹﻧﺴﺎﻧﻴﺔ ﻗﺴﻢ اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻹﻧﻜﻠﻴﺰﻳﺔ

اﻟﻔﺮد واﻟﻤﺠﺘﻤﻊ ﻓﻲ ﻣﺴﺮﺣﻴﺘﻲ اﻟﻨﻈﺮ إﻟﻰ ﻣﺎﻓﺎت ﺑﻐﻀﺐ ل أوزﺑﻮرن و ﻣﻮت ﺑﺎﺋﻊ ﻣﺘﺠﻮل ل ﻣﻴﻠﺮ

رﺳﺎﻟﺔ أﻋﺪت ﻟﻨﻴﻞ درﺟﺔ اﻟﻤﺎﺟﺴﺘﻴﺮ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺪراﺳﺎت اﻷدﺑﻴﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻗﺴﻢ اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻹﻧﻜﻠﻴﺰﻳﺔ

إﻋﺪاد: ﻓﺮح اﻟﺴﺒﺎﻋﻲ

إﺷﺮاف:

اﻷﺳﺘﺎذ اﻟﺪﻛﺘﻮر اﻟﻴﺎس ﺧﻠﻒ

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