John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, Essay Example

In the first scene of the play, Jimmy is reading the Sunday paper with Cliff, and Jimmy’s wife Alison is in the room ironing. Jimmy comments that the paper is “posh” because some of it is written in French and he cannot understand what is written. The scene then escalates to Jimmy declaring that England has “lost its soul” and no one actually lives anymore. He relates these comments to the upper class, which includes Alison, her brother Nigel, and her friend Helena Charles. He thinks that high culture and the upper class is suffocating and sucking the life out of England. Jimmy does not believe that high culture is better than the working class, and he shows a lot of anger toward the upper class because he associates it with the lack of humanity he sees in his wife. Jimmy is bitter toward high culture, and even though he is well-educated, he does not want to associate with the upper class.

Working class culture, as presented in the play, is expressed and displayed by Jimmy’s behavior, specifically his angry and abusive language directed at his wife. The anger and abuse represents the working class frustrations at the time in England. This is because England’s working class was ignored by the middle and upper class and were systematically kept in their lower social classes. Jimmy has not been able to break into the upper class, and although he has a higher level education, his social class will always determine his place in England, and his friend and business partner Cliff has the same working class fate. Jimmy represents the working class, and he is angry that people have become complacent and blames this on the upper class. Alison is of the upper class, and she displays characteristics and behaviors that Jimmy has determined to be upper class, such as reservation, complacency and lacking emotion.

Jimmy represents the masculine, working class man according to Osborne. Jimmy is angry and he is constantly verbally attacking and abusing those around him, especially the women in his life. Jimmy expresses himself through physicality, as he is often wrestling with his friend Cliff and his wife. Jimmy also reacts rather emotionally to his boring and domestic life and wants his wife to experience tragedy so she can finally feel something and know what it is like to have hardship. Osborne’s ideas on masculinity are seen in how Jimmy interacts with every one in his life, especially his relationships with women. He does not respect women and thinks they are lacking real emotion. His tirades against his wife, his mother, the upper class, all show his anger toward the upper class.