International Journal of Academic Research ISSN: 2348-7666; Vol.7, Issue-6 June, 2020 Impact Factor: 6.023; Email: [email protected]
Rashmi Rani Sahu Research Scholar in English Berhampur University, Ganjam, Odisha
World War II destroyed the rational and moral foundations of human society which in turn produced a prevalent sense of utter meaninglessness and instability of human existence. This title attempts to look into the various issues relating to the social, economic and metaphysical life in 1950s England, explored by the three dramatists Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and John Osborne. Their choice of themes such as the absurdist and existential issues and the prevailing socio-economic discontentment, as well as the structure, tone and language of the plays effectively comment on these concerns. Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film, and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism, which depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called "well-made plays". : Absurdist, Existential, modern, Social Realism.
also not a proper job for a graduate man. Look Back in Anger (1956) is commonly According to Berkowitz “inability to fulfil credited with being the play in which the anticipations is a frustration” Osborne expressed a sense of frustration (McCarthy 16). Jimmy should have been and anger at the depressing working in a job suitable for his circumstances of post-war Britain. Jimmy university education. It can be said that Porter is regarded as an embodiment of Jimmy is not working in a proper job due the frustrations of a particular age and to his working-class origins. His class especially the generation of young university degree does not make him a men who have been expecting to leave member of a higher class. Carl Bode behind their lower-class origins by using suggests that, “Jimmy knows that he is higher education. Jimmy is educated the displaced intellectual and that surely beyond his social roots; however, he embitters him” (331). Because he is cannot get what he expects from his aware of the fact that he cannot change education. Despite his university degree his social status only by a university he has worked as an advertising degree however hard he tries. Therefore, salesman, a neophyte journalist, and a as Bode claims Jimmy is “a man who has vacuum-cleaner salesman. Then he starts tried and failed to become middle-class”. to run a sweet stall for a living which is
International Journal of Academic Research ISSN: 2348-7666; Vol.7, Issue-6 June, 2020 Impact Factor: 6.023; Email: [email protected]
According to the frustration-aggression bourgeois critic, if I understand the hypothesis Jimmy’s not having a suitable nouveau-Marxists rightly, has less free job despite his university degree can be will than a parrot. He is a mere considered a “frustration produced phonograph, who can only repeat the instigation.” Jimmy is frustrated due to phrases and opinions with which he has the fact that his educational background been stuffed from his reading of does not fulfil his anticipations. bourgeois literature and his contacts with Therefore, it can be counted as one of the bourgeois science and bourgeois art. All reasons for Jimmy’s rage. “His outbreaks these make up bourgeois culture, which is of anger derive from this failure to find a mere class culture, i.e., an elaborate fulfilment” as Simon Trussler asserts. and colossal system of apologetics; worse, Throughout the play Jimmy rails about an instrument for class dominance and politics, religion and other social class oppression. The bourgeois critic, in institutions. (Osborne26) Jimmy feels brief, is a mere automaton, incapable of betrayed by the previous generation surmounting or of escaping from the because his generation is experiencing bourgeois ideology in which he is the disappointment of World War II. imprisoned; and the poor fool's delusion However, Jimmy is looking for some that he is capable of seeing any problem enthusiasm instead of exhaustion. with relative objectivity and Because he had a father who believed disinterestedness is simply one more that there were still, even after the evidence that he cannot pierce beyond slaughter of the first World War, causes the walls of his ideological cell. good enough to fight for and collective The subject matter of twentieth-century actions worthy of individual support. English theatre until 1956 had been polite, perhaps witty, and even elegant The astonishingly rapid spread, and glittering in the use of language; in the last two or three years, of the however, it did not speak to the concerns application of so-called social standards of the nation, either young or old. It was in literary criticism, and particularly of a theatre of diversion, a theatre careful so-called Marxian standards, makes it not to upset the illusions of its middle- desirable that these standards should be class audience, a theatre that had lost all submitted to a critical examination. In relevance to life as it was in fact being undertaking such an examination, one is lived in post-World War II England. John confronted at the very beginning by a Osborne changed that. As Kenneth formidable difficulty. One feels that few Tynan said in the Observer on December of the writers whose theories are being 19, 1959: “Good taste, reticence and examined will trouble to weigh on their middle-class understatement were merits any of the specific objections convicted of hypocrisy and jettisoned on offered. For most of the nouveau- the spot.” They were not jettisoned in Marxists know all the answers in polite, or even comedic, political or social advance. They know that any critic who analysis; they were jettisoned by an questions any item in the Marxian articulate, educated, furious young man ideology is a "bourgeois" critic, and that who pointed out what his contemporary his objections are "bourgeois" criticisms, world was really like. It was not the and from that terrible and crushing world of egalitarianism and idealism that adjective there is no appeal. For the had been envisioned by the socialist
International Journal of Academic Research ISSN: 2348-7666; Vol.7, Issue-6 June, 2020 Impact Factor: 6.023; Email: [email protected] intellectuals. It was a dreary world in of that personal element that the play which, as Jimmy says, “There aren’t any remains not only valid but also vivid to good, brave causes left.” (Taylor36). audiences today. In spite of the broadening of opportunities for university education, Jimmy’s main conflict is with the old power structure based on “the old Alison. While the marriage is a boy” network of school and family misalliance, it is not just that of a connections were still very much in place. Colonel’s daughter marrying the rough- The old power structure was cynical and hewn commoner; it is the misalliance of bent on its own perpetuation. The someone who is alive and suffering to one Church of England was as much a part of who shuts off all suffering and sensitivity the Establishment as the politicians and to the suffering of others to avoid the also seemed out of touch with the pain of life. They have been married for everyday realities of the people. For three years and their own routine has Jimmy, and for Osborne, the answers become deadening. Jimmy’s first direct provided by the Church were a simple attack on Alison comes barely a minute bromide that prevented people from into the play when he says, “She hasn’t looking at their lives and their society had a thought in years! Have you?” honestly. The “Bishop of Bromley” who is Shortly after, he says, “All this time I quoted by Jimmy may be a fictional have been married to this woman, this person, but his call for Christians to help monument of non-attachment,” and calls develop the H-Bomb was not fictional. her “The Lady Pusillanimous.” John Osborne found a form that captured (Worth,46) Alison’s cool remoteness the unformed mood and discontent of the extends even to their lovemaking. Jimmy audience in 1956 England and gave it says, “Do you know I have never known voice. The theatre must bring that the great pleasure of lovemaking when I reality to life in a memorable way. Jimmy didn’t desire it myself. She has the Porter is a magnificent character, and the passion of a python.” He wants to power of his invective is certainly awaken her to life, with all its pain. That memorable. his passion and despair lead him to excess John Osborne said many times that his is undeniable: he wishes her to have a aim was not to analyze and write about child and to have that child die. He says, social ills but rather to make people feel. “If only I could watch you face that. I Jimmy Porter is not a political activist: wonder if you might even become a he is a man living day-to-day in a world in recognizable human being yourself.” He which feelings and imaginative response later says he wants to watch her grovel in to others has been deadened by the mud. “I want to stand up in your convention. Jimmy’s attacks are not tears, and splash about in them, and against abstract ideas. He realizes what sing.” this world of dead ideas and moribund To be alive is to feel pain. Certainly, the custom is doing to him and to those he notion that suffering validates human loves. It is his desire to awaken them to existence is an idea that runs through feelings, to being truly and vibrantly world drama from the time of Sophocles. alive, that drives Jimmy Porter. Look Moreover, Jimmy recognizes that Alison’s Back in Anger is a deeply felt drama of lack of emotional commitment to personal relationships, and it is because anything is draining him of his own zest
International Journal of Academic Research ISSN: 2348-7666; Vol.7, Issue-6 June, 2020 Impact Factor: 6.023; Email: [email protected] for life. He tells of Alison’s mother doing play when he wrote it. Jimmy’s anger is all she could to prevent the marriage, deep and it is not new or brought on by “All so that I shouldn’t carry off her current circumstances, either in his daughter on that old charger of mine, all domestic life or society at large tricked out and caparisoned in discredited (Yerebakan,66). passions and ideals! The old grey mare actually once led the charge against the At the age of ten, Jimmy watched old order well; she certainly ain’t what his idealistic father dying for twelve she used to be. It was all she could do to months, and “I was the only one who carry me, but your weight was too much cared!” He says, “You see, I learnt at an for her. She just dropped dead on the early age what it was to be angry angry way.” Jimmy is fighting for his love and and helpless. And I can never forget it.” for his own inner life. He needs to break Jimmy’s source of pain and anger seem to down Alison’s neutrality. come from the same source as that of John Osborne who, at an early age, It was Jimmy’s vibrant life that watched his own father die of attracted Alison to him in the first place. tuberculosis.“Good plays change their In Act II, scene 1, she describes to Helena meaning with time,” said critic Michael the time she first met Jimmy: Belington in the Guardian after seeing “Everything about him seemed to burn, the 1989 revival of Look Back in Anger. It his face, the edges of his hair glistened is a measure of its worth that even forty- and seemed to spring off his head, and his two years after it. eyes were so blue and filled with the sun.” In Act II, scene 2, she also shows McCarthy, Mary. “A New insight when she tells her father why she Word.” John Osborne Look Back in married Jimmy: “I’d lived a happy, Anger. Ed. John Russell Taylor. London: uncomplicated life, and suddenly, this Macmillan, 1968. spiritual barbarian throws down the gauntlet at me. Perhaps only another Osborne, John. Dejavu. Look Back in woman could understand what a Anger and Other Plays. London, Boston: challenge like that means.” Faber and Faber, 1993. Alison does suffer the loss of her unborn child and she does return to Jimmy richer Taylor, John Russell. John Osborne in the humility and pain of living. At the Look Back in Anger. London: Macmillan, end of the play they have entered into 1968. their game of “bears and squirrels,” which Alison explained earlier was a Worth, Katharine J. “The Angry Young place where “we could become little furry Man.” John Osborne Look Back in creatures with little furry brains. Full of Anger. Ed. John Russell Taylor. London: dumb, uncomplicated affection for each Macmillan, 1968. other. A silly symphony for people who couldn’t bear the pain of being human beings any longer.” It seems doubtful Portraits in Look Back in Anger.” that such a withdrawal from the world is Hacettepe University Journal of English likely to last, and it is likely that Osborne Literature and British Culture. No.6, recognized the irony of the ending of the PP.37-48, 1997.