Look Back in Anger Character List

Jimmy Porter

Jimmy Porter is the play’s main character. He is the “Angry Young Man” who expresses his frustration for the lack of feelings in his placid domestic life. Jimmy can be understood as both a hero for his unfiltered expressions of emotion and frustration in a culture that propagated unemotional resignation. He can also be considered a villain for the ways in which his anger proves to be destructive to those in his life.

Cliff Lewis

Cliff is a friend to both Jimmy and Alison. Cliff lives with them in their attic apartment. He is a working class Welsh man and Jimmy makes sure to often point out that he is “common” and uneducated. Cliff believes this is the reason that Jimmy keeps him as a friend. He is quite fond of Alison and they have a strange physically affectionate relationship throughout the play.

Alison Porter

Alison Porter is Jimmy’s wife. She comes from Britain’s upper class, but married into Jimmy’s working class lifestyle. The audience learns in the first act that she is pregnant with Jimmy’s child. Jimmy’s destructive anger causes her great strain and she eventually leaves him. Her child miscarries and she comes back to Jimmy to show him that she has undergone great suffering.

Helena Charles

Helena Charles is Alison’s best friend. She lives with them in their apartment while visiting for work. Helena is from an upper class family. She is responsible for getting Alison to leave Jimmy. She and Jimmy then begin an affair. Her sense of morality leads her to leave. She can be considered the play’s moral compass.

Colonel Redfern

Colonel Redfern is Alison’s father. He represents Britain’s great Edwardian past. He was a military leader in India for many years before returning with his family to England. He is critical of Jimmy and Alison’s relationship, but accepts that he is to blame for many of their problems because of his meddling in their affairs.

Look Back in Anger Themes

The Angry Young Man

Osborne’s play was the first to explore the theme of the “Angry Young Man.” This term describes a generation of post-World War II artists and working class men who generally ascribed to leftist, sometimes anarchist, politics and social views. According to cultural critics, these young men were not a part of any organized movement but were, instead, individuals angry at a post-Victorian Britain that refused to acknowledge their social and class alienation.

Jimmy Porter is often considered to be literature‘s seminal example of the angry young man. Jimmy is angry at the social and political structures that he believes has kept him from achieving his dreams and aspirations. He directs this anger towards his friends and, most notably, his wife Alison.

THEMES

The Kitchen Sink Drama

Kitchen Sink drama is a term used to denote plays that rely on realism to explore domestic social relations. Realism, in British theater, was first experimented with in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by such playwrights as George Bernard Shaw. This genre attempted to capture the lives of the British upper class in a way that realistically reflected the ordinary drama of ruling class British society.

According to many critics, by the mid-twentieth century the genre of realism had become tired and unimaginative. Osborne’s play returned imagination to the Realist genre by capturing the anger and immediacy of post-war youth culture and the alienation that resulted in the British working classes. Look Back in Anger was able to comment on a range of domestic social dilemmas in this time period. Most importantly, it was able to capture, through the character of Jimmy Porter, the anger of this generation that festered just below the surface of elite British culture.

Loss of Childhood

A theme that impacts the characters of Jimmy and Alison Porter is the idea of a lost childhood. Osborne uses specific examples — the death of Jimmy’s father when Jimmy was only ten, and how he was forced to watch the physical and mental demise of the man — to demonstrate the way in which Jimmy is forced to deal with suffering from an early age. Alison’s loss of childhood is best seen in the way that she was forced to grow up too fast by marrying Jimmy. Her youth is wasted in the anger and abuse that her husband levels upon her.

Osborne suggests that a generation of British youth has experienced this same loss of childhood innocence. Osborne uses the examples of World War, the development of the atomic bomb, and the decline of the British Empire to show how an entire culture has lost the innocence that other generations were able to maintain.

Real Life

In the play, Jimmy Porter is consumed with the desire to live a more real and full life. He compares this burning desire to the empty actions and attitudes of others. At first, he generalizes this emptiness by criticizing the lax writing and opinions of those in the newspapers. He then turns his angry gaze to those around him and close to him, Alison, Helena, and Cliff.

Osborne’s argument in the play for a real life is one in which men are allowed to feel a full range of emotions. The most real of these emotions is anger and Jimmy believes that this anger is his way of truly living. This idea was unique in British theater during the play’s original run. Osborne argued in essays and criticisms that, until his play, British theater had subsumed the emotions of characters rendering them less realistic. Jimmy’s desire for a real life is an attempt to restore raw emotion to the theater.

Sloth in British Culture

Jimmy Porter compares his quest for a more vibrant and emotional life to the slothfulness of the world around him. It is important to note that Jimmy does not see the world around him as dead, but merely asleep in some fundamental way. This is a fine line that Osborne walks throughout the play. Jimmy never argues that there is a nihilism within British culture. Instead, he sees a kind of slothfulness of character. His anger is an attempt to awaken those around him from this cultural sleep.

This slothfulness of emotion is best seen in the relationship between Alison and Cliff. Alison describes her relationship with Cliff as “comfortable.” They are physically and emotionally affectionate with each other, but neither seems to want to take their passion to another level of intimacy. In this way, their relationship is lazy. They cannot awaken enough passion to consummate their affair. Jimmy seems to subconsciously understand this, which is the reason he is not jealous of their affection towards one another.

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire

The character of Colonel Redfern, Alison’s father, represents the decline of and nostalgia for the British Empire. The Colonel had been stationed for many years in India, a symbol of Britain’s imperial reach into the world. The Edwardian age which corresponded to Britain’s height of power, had been the happiest of his life. His nostalgia is representative of the denial that Osborne sees in the psyche of the British people. The world has moved on into an American age, he argues, and the people of the nation cannot understand why they are no longer the world’s greatest power.

Masculinity in Art

Osborne has been accused by critics of misogynistic views in his plays. Many point to Look Back in Anger as the chief example. These critics accuse Osborne of glorifying young male anger and cruelty towards women and homosexuals. This is seen in the play in specific examples in which Jimmy Porter emotionally distresses Alison, his wife, and delivers a grisly monologue in which he wishes for Alison’s mother’s death.

Osborne, however, asserts that he is attempting to restore a vision of true masculinity into a twentieth century culture that he sees as becoming increasingly feminized. This feminization is seen in the way that British culture shows an “indifference to anything but immediate, personal suffering.” This causes a deadness within which Jimmy’s visceral anger and masculine emotion is a retaliation against.

Jimmy and Cliff read newspapers throughout Act 1 and Act 3, and they are a major visual feature in the apartment. Jimmy uses the newspaper as a symbol of his education. They are a way for him to mimic the habits of the upper class, university-educated elite. He repeatedly comments on what he is reading, sometimes using erudite vocabulary. He also uses newspaper articles as a way to belittle the intelligence of Cliff and Alison, which is one of the tactics he employs to make himself feel smarter and more worthwhile. Yet, Jimmy’s relationship with newspapers also shows his ambivalent relationship to his educated status. He says that the newspapers make him “feel ignorant,” and he often mocks “posh” papers, which, in his mind, are out of touch with the real concerns of working class men like him. The newspapers in the apartment also form a “jungle,” showing that, in a working class environment, this status symbol becomes something that upper class characters like Alison would consider chaotic and dangerous. This reflects the way that greater social mobility has caused social upheaval in Britain.

Pipe Symbol Analysis

Jimmy’s pipe is another example of an upper class symbol that Jimmy uses instead to reflect his working class status. Pipes call to mind old, educated, university professors. Jimmy’s pipe is a way for him to dominate the scene and assert himself as a rebellious force in the world (and he uses his force largely to rail against upper class norms). His pipe smoke fills the room, and creates a smell that other characters come to associate with him. Alison says in the first act that she has “gotten used” to it, reflecting the way that she adapts her values and sensibilities depending on the context that she is in. Helena later says that she has grown to “like” the smell, reflecting the attraction that she feels to Jimmy, and also the fact that she retains more of a sense of self than Alison does in the same situation—Helena positively likes the smell, while Alison is merely “used” to it. While living with her parents in the third act of the play, the smell of pipe smoke reminds Alison of Jimmy, and soon after, she comes back to him. Once in the apartment, she absentmindedly cleans up the ashes from the pipe, reflecting the fact that she retains her upper class sense of respectability and order, even as she returns from her parents’ home to live in Jimmy’s world. The pipe thus becomes a litmus test of Helena and Alison’s relationship with Jimmy throughout the play.

Bear and SquirrelSymbol Analysis

Alison and Jimmy’s bear and squirrel game gives them a way to access a simple affection for each other that they cannot achieve in normal life. The bear is associated with Jimmy, and the squirrel with Alison. The animals symbolize the fact that social norms and conventions interfere with the love that these two characters have for each other. Their relationship is a site of class and societal conflict, and this means that their love becomes fraught with anger and fighting. When they act like animals, whose only concerns are food, shelter, cleanliness, and sex, they can forget that conflict and feel a simpler version of love for each other. The fact that they keep stuffed animal versions of the bear and squirrel in the apartment reflects a childlike innocence that these characters find it difficult to maintain in their troubled world, but that they still hope for.

The church bells symbolize a respectable middle class morality that Jimmy finds oppressive. Helena subscribes to this version of morality, which posits that some things are clearly right, while others are wrong and “sinful.” Jimmy, on the other hand, believes that the rules of respectable society are something to struggle against. In his mind, it is moral to act in allegiance with his oppressed class, and to feel emotions as keenly and intensely as possible. The church bells chime from outside the window at various points in the play, reflecting the fact that these middle class rules are a fact of life in most of the world, and that they often intrude into the apartment, and into Jimmy’s life. He curses and yells when he hears them, reflecting his anger at this system of morality. Alison leaves for church with Helena in the middle of act 2, following Helena back into a middle class world.

Trumpet Symbol Analysis

Jimmy’s jazz trumpetcan be heard off stage at various points in the play. Jazz has traditionally been protest music, and is associated with the working classes. It symbolizes Jimmy’s desire to be a voice of resistance in society, but it also shows the futility of that dream. It serves largely to annoy and antagonize those around him, not to call a movement to attention. Like Jimmy’s pipe smoke, the trumpet also allows Jimmy to assert his dominance non-verbally. He disrupts his domestic scene (playing the trumpet only inside), but makes little headway truly disrupting the world around him.

Imagery

Two sound images from off-stage are used very effectively in Look Back in Anger: the church bells and Jimmy’s jazz trumpet. The church bells invade the small living space and serve as a reminder of the power of the established church, and also that it doesn’t care at all for their domestic peace. The jazz trumpet allows Jimmy’s presence to dominate the stage even when he is not there, and it also serves as his anti-Establishment “raspberry.”

Contrast Alice and Helena

Contrast Helena and Alice

Alison Porter

Alison Porter is Jimmy’s wife. She comes from Britain’s upper class, but married into Jimmy’s working class lifestyle. The audience learns in the first act that she is pregnant with Jimmy’s child. Jimmy’s destructive anger causes her great strain and she eventually leaves him. Her child miscarries and she comes back to Jimmy to show him that she has undergone great suffering.

Helena Charles

Helena Charles is Alison’s best friend. She lives with them in their apartment while visiting for work. Helena is from an upper class family. She is responsible for getting Alison to leave Jimmy. She and Jimmy then begin an affair. Her sense of morality leads her to leave. She can be considered the play’s moral compass.

The Language In Look Back in Anger

The language in look back in anger is different compared to its contemporaries. The language is realistic; the characters are able to say what they would say in that situation in real life. In a way the writer John Orsborne had no limits because if something had to be real it needed everything to be realistic. Orsborne uses his characters as a mouth piece to examine the reality of life in the 1950s in Britain.

At the start of the play there seem to be a lot of exposition from the characters to describe themselves or tell us about the situation. For example ” James Porter, aged twenty five, was bound over last week after pleading guilty to interfering with a small cabbage and two tins of beans on his way home from the Builders Arms.” This tells us Jimmy’s age and that he likes going to the pub, and shows that Cliff seems to have a sense of humour. The exposition goes on throughout the play. We see this when jimmy is talk about Alison family and what was happening to his dying father when he was 10. The colonel has his share in exposition when he’s talking to his daughter Alison about the past. “It was March 1914, when left England, and, apart from leaves every ten years or so, “the information Osborne constantly provides us with about each characters past helps the audience understand their personalities.

In this play Orsborne uses dramatic irony. For example jimmy has some lines of dramatic irony, for example when he says to Alison “if you could have a child, and it would die.” This is ironic because towards the end of the play Alison has a miscarriage. Although Jimmy wanted her to go through this sort of pain he is affected in a way he never expected. The other ironic line Jimmy has is when Helena tells him that his got a phone call and he says ” well, it can’t be anything good, can it?” this is ironic because as he gets the message from the call that Hugh’s mother has had a stroke. Jimmy at some extent is a product of what has happened to him during his life.

The play involves a lot of emotion. Jimmy chief motivating emotion is anger through out the play until the end when he embraces Alison, this is no doubt it is the characters most vulnerable point in the whole play.

The pauses are very important in the play because they make the moments of tension more effective, and shows us the emotion of most of the characters. For example when Alison tells cliff she’s pregnant.

Alison: you see- (hesitates) I’m pregnant.

Cliff: (after a few moments) I will need some scissors.

Alison: They re over there.

Cliff: (crossing to the dressing table) that’s something, isn’t it? When did you find out?

At this point it shoes that Cliff is troubled about this, that’s why he asks for the scissors just to hide his feelings for her. Another point which we worked on in class is when Alison arrives at the end of act 3 scene 1; there is a big pause before she says anything.

Alison: (quietly) Hullo.

Jimmy: (to Helena, after a moment) friend of yours to see you.

After saying the line he leaves the room and the two women are left staring at each other. This is obviously this is a cliff hanger ending to the scene, there is tension between the two women.

Osborne has included several monologues in the play. Jimmy is the character with most of the monologues. In the majority of his monologues his objective is to provoke the others but the desperately try to ignore his taunts. His main objective usually is to irritate his wife Alison that it could lead to an argument. From the beginning of Act 1he is constantly trying to make his wife angry, he finally succeeds when she gets burnt with an iron and she tells him violently to get out.

Alison: Get out!

Jimmy: (her head shaking helplessly) clear out of my sight.

This s the first time that Alison is actually showing that she is angry with jimmy. Even though the fight that caused the accident was between him and Cliff.

The monologue that I worked on in class was from act 2 scene 1 when Alison is about to go to church with Helena and jimmy is not in favour of her decision. In this monologue I had to think of the emotions which where associated with jimmy at the time, and I had to picture they way he would talk and act to these emotions. At the start of the monologue he is motivated and wants every one to see how he feels and as he goes on he loses his inspiration because he knows that no one is paying any attention to him.

The emotion and realism in the language makes the play very realistic because it helps the audience understand the situation the characters are in and helps the audience make a good mental judgement of the characters.

EVALUATION QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the use of imagery in the play.
2. Discuss the use of symbol in the play.

GENERAL EVALUATIONS/REVISION QUESTIONS

1. Examine the roles of the protagonist in the play.
2. Comment on the dramatic techniques employed in the play.

READING ASSIGNMENT

Read the last act of  the play  and explain how it ends. 

WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT

1. A fable is a story in which A. allegations are made about characters. B. animals or things are used as characters. C. there is an important setting. D. the story is told in poetic form.
2. The juxtaposition of two contrasting ideas in a line of poetry is A. euphemism.

B. synecdoche.C. catharsis.D. oxymoron.

• Drama is the representation of a complete series of actions by means of A. movement and gesture for the screen and audience. B. speech, movement and gesture for the stage only. C. speech, movement and gesture for the stage, screen and radio. D. movement only.
• Identify the odd item. A. Poetry B. Prose C. Melodrama D. Drama
• “All the world is a stage,” is an example of A. metaphor. B. paradox. C. allusion.

D. personification.

THEORY

Examine any theme of your choice in the play.

EVALUATION QUESTIONS

1. Describe the main character in the work above.
2. Examine the work as a historical piece.

GENERAL EVALUATIONS/REVISION QUESTIONS

1. Discuss two themes in the work?
2. Prove that the work is a satire.

READING ASSIGNMENT

Read acts 1 to 3 of the drama and summarise. 

WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT

1. A story which explains a natural phenomenon is A. legend B. parable. C. myth.

D. fiction.

• A narrative in which characters and events are invented is A. fiction. B. epistolary.

C. autobiography.D. biography.

• Lines and stanzas are to poetry as action and dialogue are to A. music. B. prose.

C. fiction.D. drama.

• The performers in a play constitute the A. chorus. B. characters. C. audience. D. cast.
• The types of literary work are A. eras. B. episodes. C. genres. D. cantos.

THEORY

Describe the main character in the work.