Look back in Anger - Samuel Beckett

Look back in Anger

Samuel Beckett

Plot

Jimmy Porter represents the frustrated British youth of the 1950s. He is a snobbish university graduate who lives in a squalid attic flat in the Midlands with Cliff, his uneducated friend. Jimmy has married Allison, an upper-middle class woman and with her he is violent. She is pregnant but unable to tell him. In the second Act she decided to leave him and in the third Act she returns home. The plot is circular, because in the last Act, objective reality is the same as it was at the beginning.

Conventional structure

It is a conventionally three-act play and the setting is single and naturalistic. The plot is logical and easy to follow; the language is outspoken and there is the presence of a thoughtful-working hero, like the rebel Jimmy Porter.

Jimmy Porter

His anger lies in his father's premature death, on his wife's failure to share his anger and on a society which leaves no room for young people. He is the embodiment of the "protester" without a clear, definite cause to fight for. He is an anti-hero because he only speaks but never acts. His psychological attitude shows the consequences of a childhood trauma, a sense of personal failure. Between Alison and Jimmy there is a lack of communication, underlined in act 2, where Alison does not speak

Alison and Helene

Alison is Jimmy's victim, but she is so by her own choice and she is stronger than Helena, her friend. Helena comes from the upper-class; she is honest and straightforward and she never pretends to accept Jimmy's ideas.

Cliff

Cliff is a working-class uneducated man who shows none of the neurotic egotism displayed by Jimmy.

Style

The five character represent the social class and generation gap at the centre of the play. Jimmy is dissatisfied because, according to him nothing has really changed and everything is controlled by the same establishment as it was before. The language differs from the middle-class comedies of the past: is colloquial, spontaneous and vital. The vulgar expressions of Jimmy can be understood by everyone, so the play is also public.

Note

The play reflected of the destruction of the certainties and basic assumptions of the previous age: the decline of religious belief, the mistrust in rationalism as a mean to explain reality, the disillusionment with the social ideas brought about the totalitarianism, the materialism and consumerism of contemporary society.

Look back in Anger started a new trend in contemporary drama: the angry young men, that indicate British writers that speak about the cultural disillusionment of young generations who reacted against Establishment (organisation who control a country and support the existing order of society, traditions, conventions). The target was the middle-class. They shared a rebel attitude against the cultural background of the fifties. The young protesters wanted to establish the culture of youth.

Connections

Other examples of social and literary movement similar to that of "Angry Young Men" in their reaction of traditional values and rebellion against social conventions are the beat generation, the teddy boys (They had a reputation of violence and they became synonymous with juvenile delinquency and racism - "We are not against the Blacks, let's just say we are not with them"), the music of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones.

Differences between Beckett and Osborne:

The plot: obscure B --- true-to-life, consequential O

The setting: symbolic and bare (spoglio) B --- realistic and related to working class O

The theme: meaningless B --- social critic against the middle class values O

The stage: repetitive and frequent B --- detailed, informative and clear O

The language: everyday, meaningless B --- everyday, simple and clear O