Of Anger and Disempowerment - Assignment Example

To what extent can one separate the personal from the social in discussing the anger of Jimmy Porter in the play Look Back in Anger? Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger brought about a new force to the English theatre and the play paved the way for the revolutionary ‘angry young man’ movement. The ‘anger’ of the protagonist in the play assumes social significance as Jimmy Porter makes his angry outbursts at the then contemporary English society where the middle class young men struggled hard to establish themselves. Jimmy is a true representative of the discontented middle class young men who had to bury their aspirations and dreams as the society did not provide them any opportunity for growth. Therefore, the anger of Jimmy in the play is both personal and social and the reader can very well experience the mental struggles and hardships that Jimmy undergoes in his day to day life. In fact, Jimmy raises his voice against all sorts of established and conventional social, gender, class and sexual relations; however, he does not point out any solutions and goes on complaining about each and everything he comes across. As Saugata Mukherjee points out, “The young, educated English youth, portrayed in Look Back in Anger, is a confused soul and the post-war changeover in the character of international politics raises doubts to which he finds no answers” (Mukherjee, 2006, p. 130) Jimmy feels that he is living in a dreary world where “there aren’t any good, brave causes left” (Osborne, p. 89). He tries to escape himself in to the animal world and the Bear and Squirrel game in the play is such an attempt of escape from the real world. However, the couples understand the inability of the ‘furry animals’ to bring about any positive changes and Alison rightly confesses that the Bear and Squirrel game is nothing but “a silly symphony for people who couldn’t bear the pain of human beings any longer” (Osborne, p. 46). However Jimmy does not want to live a life of inaction. He is fed up with the routine life that he leads. Sundays are so depressing for Jimmy as he can no longer cope up with the same ritual of “reading the paper, drinking tea, ironing” (Osborne, p. 8). Thus, for him life is a replica of the same routine and this adds to his dissatisfaction with the new age. He despises the life of inaction that Cliff and Alison lead and cries out: “Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm” (Osborne, p. 10). He refers to the Edwardian world of Colonel Redfern as a symbol of the bygone era and the colonel’s world provides him inspiration to aspire for changes. Similarly, he retreats to Jazz and trumpet to find solace; in fact, “his trumpet is his non-verbal mode of protest, an effort to recreate a world where ‘a little ordinary human enthusiasm’ was not still an impossibility” (Chakrabarti, 2006, p. 150). Thus, it is evident from the play that Jimmy is nostalgic about the past and the bygone era; he fails to find any sort of solace in the present and his discontentment naturally leads him to criticise the present. Contradictions are part of Jimmy’s personality and these contradictions in his nature make him unpredictable and make it difficult for others to judge whether his anger is personal or is directed towards the society. Osborne himself pictures Jimmy as a man of “disconcerting mixture of sincerity and cheerful malice, of tenderness and freebooting cruelty; restless, importunate, full of pride, a combination which alienates the sensitive and insensitive alike” (Osborne, p. 1). Jimmy wants to break away from the middle class values that his family and society were in. One finds him getting angry about Alison’s virginity when he married her as he considered keeping one’s virginity as a typical middle class value. Alison states how Jimmy taunted her about her virginity as he believed that “an untouched woman would defile him” (Osborne, p. 27). Similarly, Alison does not disclose Jimmy of her pregnancy after marriage for fear that he would get angry. In the same way Jimmy does not show any sort of disapproval in the flirting between Cliff and Alison; Helena even doubts whether Cliff is the real father of Alison’s child. Jimmy reads ‘posh papers’, but is reluctant to watch pictures as he does not want to spoil his pleasure by ‘the Sunday night yobs in the front row’ (Osborne, p. 8). In the same way, the relation between Jimmy and Cliff in the play assumes significance; Cliff is more than a friend to him. Even when Alison leaves him Jimmy remains unaffected and he is unscrupulous in building up an illicit relationship with Helena. Thus, one can clearly notice that Jimmy keeps himself away from the moral values propagated by the Catholic Church and challenges all sorts of moral codes through his actions. At another instance in the play, Jimmy quotes the “Bishop of Bromley” who exhorts Christians to develop H-Bomb; thus, Jimmy represents Osborne’s own resentment towards the Church of England. Jimmy’s anger is quite social in the sense that he wants others to feel the pulse of the society. He states that “anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity” (Osborne, p. 58). Osborne’s attempt is to picture his protagonist as a complete revolutionary who propagates changes but does not turn out to be an activist. Terry W. Browne makes this idea clear when he states that “Jimmy Porter is not a political activist: he is a man living day-to-day in a world in which feelings and imaginative response to others has been deadened by convention. Jimmy’s attacks are not against abstract ideas. He realizes what this world of dead ideas and moribund custom is doing to him and to those he loves” (Browne 2009). Thus, it can be concluded that Jimmy’s anger is towards all sorts of conventions and establishments that prevent man to feel and respond freely. Jimmy is contemptuous towards the upper class bourgeoisie and he tries to establish the victory of a working-class man over the bourgeoisie in his relations with Alison. Jimmy considers Alison’s mummy and Daddy as “arrogant and full of malice”. He does not like Alison’s brother Nigel too. For him, even though Nigel would climb the political ladder towards power, “his knowledge of life and ordinary human beings is so hazy” (Osborne, p. 14). Jimmy loses no chance to point his fingers at Alison’s lack of commitment. Alison marries Jimmy as she was fascinated by his never-relenting enthusiasm, but she fails to adjust herself with his vicarious existence. She is moved by her upper class breeding and convention, and lacks the ‘little ordinary enthusiasm’ (Osborne, p. 8) and the ability to feel that Jimmy craves for. Jimmy describes Alison as a ‘monument of non-attachment” (Osborne, p. 16); even in their love making Jimmy experiences the cold neutrality of Alison. He wishes her to give birth to a child and see that child die so that she experiences pain, passion and despair which would make her a ‘recognizable human being’. At the end of the play Alison does suffer from the loss of her unborn child and this makes her to experience the pain of living. Thus, having regained the ability to feel, she returns to Jimmy as a transformed woman and at the end of the play when they play the game of ‘Bear and Squirrel’ it is with deeper understanding and intimacy. Jimmy’s anger towards the society derives partly from the hard realities of life he experienced when he was a boy of 10 years old. Jimmy learnt how to feel and get angry at the age of 10 when he found his father dying for twelve months and he states that he was the only one who cared for his father. He narrates with vigour how his mother looked after his father at his death bed without any sort of complaining. He feels that both Alison and Cliff have not been exposed to such experiences and this has left them unable to feel the world around them. Jimmy states: “I knew more about-love…betrayal…and death, when I was ten years old than you will probably ever know all your life” (Osborne, p. 58). Jimmy has formed his ideology based on his own experiences and this has been the striking difference between Jimmy and all others in the play. An analysis of the social implications of Jimmy’s anger and the play in general calls for a thorough understanding of the socio-economic and political scenario of Britain after the Second World War. The war had tremendous impacts on the class divisions of the nation. The working class people became prominent after the war and their bargaining power in the British society increased considerably. The family roles-that of woman being the home maker and man being the breadwinner-did not undergo any major changes even though women liberation movements were at work after the war. The war provided immense freedom to the youths of the nation; many youths remained detached from the rest of the society and many young people began to question traditional religious observance. The introduction of the Welfare state by the Labour party government brought about revolutionary changes. More and wore working class men received better educational opportunities: “While the old social order was deteriorating, the working-class became more visible, more vocal because the Welfare State had increased educational opportunities and earning potentials. The Angry Young Men represented a new order of the “white-collar proletariat”, educated working-class men who could now vent their frustrations with a class system that had oppressed them for decades” (Historical, Political, Social and Cultural Background). Thus, Jimmy’s outbursts on the class system in the British society go beyond his personal frustrations and set backs. Jimmy, in a way, suffers from an inward social alienation; he is neither able to cope up with the upper class breeding of Alison nor is he able to stick on to his working class existence. Most of the marital problems between Alison and Jimmy stem from their different social class upbringing: “Jimmy, who belongs to a new, socially mobile generation which reached adulthood after the Second World War finds himself, through his marriage to Alison and his university education, in a limbo between two social classes” (Historical, Political, Social and Cultural Background). Alison, Helena and Alison’s father represent the upper middle class culture whereas Jimmy Porter is vexed between the two cultures: “Jimmy is trapped between a past from which he cannot escape and a future which he cannot accept” (Historical, Political, Social and Cultural Background). In a way both Jimmy and Colonel Redfern live in their past; while the Colonel is not very much concerned with the present he is happy and contented by enumerating his past memories, Jimmy’s life becomes miserable as his past haunts him just as the present makes him angry and frustrated. Alison rightly understands why both her father and Jimmy are hurt: she says: “You’re hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. Something’s gone wrong somewhere, hasn’t it? (Osborne, p.70). While all the other characters in the play are ready to cope up with life, Jimmy remains adamant and rigid: Alison is ready to adjust with her middle class life in a congested atmosphere; Helena and Cliff also have attuned to the new age. Jimmy’s characterization is done in such way that his outbursts and anger seem to be quite personal rather than social. His angry outbursts very often sound to be childish as they lack social commitments. He directs his anger towards everything and everyone but never tries to alter the society or the so called establishments that he complaints about. In fact Jimmy is dissatisfied with himself rather than with the society and very often his angry outbursts lack clear objectives: ‘his anger is directed at those who come close enough to be struck, but his dissatisfaction is with himself, and with his inability to change the world” and his angry outbursts are part of “a complex defence mechanism which hides his own basic insecurity” (Historical, Political, Social and Cultural Background). Helena understands that Jimmy is incapable of effecting any changes for the future and in Act Three she describes him as essentially ‘futile’. However, for Jimmy his angry outbursts stem from his heart and only through sentimentalising or idealizing about the past he can find existence in the contemporary society. Jimmy, in this respect, is a true representative of many working-class youths who were highly educated but could not find an acceptable role or place in the British society during the post war era. To conclude, Jimmy Porter is the anti-hero of the play Look Back in Anger. Even though Jimmy lacks the qualities of a protagonist, he has got his own personal ideologies that he does not comprise with. He fights single-handedly against and whether he succeeds in his attempts is debatable. Even though Jimmy is outrageous and rude most of the time, he is not devoid of soft feelings. When Helena tells him that Cliff is leaving, he replies: “he’s sloppy, irritating bastard, but he’s got a big heart” (Osborne, p. 91). At another instance one finds Alison admitting to Cliff that “Jimmy’s got his own private morality” (Osborne, p. 26). Jimmy influences Cliff, Helena and Alison with his angry outbursts and at the end of the play Alison seems to have accepted his ideologies. Even though, Jimmy’s ‘anger’ in the play is personal and is directed towards himself, one can never undermine the social implications of his angry outbursts. Works Cited Mukherjee, S 2006, “Of Anger and Disempowerment: Jimmy Porter (ing) between Two Worlds”, in G. J. V. Prasad (ed.), Look Back in Anger, Longman Study Edition, Faber and Faber, London, pp. 131-41. Chakrabarti, P 2006, “The Symbols of Anger”, in Look Back in Anger, in G. J. V. Prasad (ed.), Look Back in Anger, Longman Study Edition, Faber and Faber, London, pp. 142-53. Osborne, John 2006, Look Back in Anger, G. J. V. Prasad (ed.), Longman Study Edition, Faber and Faber, London. Browne, TW 2009, Look Back in Anger (Criticism), Answers.com, viewed 2 May 2009, < http://www.answers.com/topic/look-back-in-anger-play-7> Historical, Political, Social and Cultural Background, viewed 2 May 2009, < http://www.exames.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=618&Itemid=27> Read More