Look Back in Anger

Look Back in Anger, play in three acts by John Osborne, performed in 1956 and published in 1957. A published description of Osborne as an “angry young man” was extended to apply to an entire generation of disaffected young British writers who identified with the lower classes and viewed the upper classes and the established political institutions with disdain.

Although the form of the play was not revolutionary, its content was unexpected. Onstage for the first time were the 20- to 30-year-olds of Great Britain who had not participated in World War II and who found its aftermath lacking in promise. The hero, Jimmy Porter, is the son of a worker. Through the state educational system, he has reached an uncomfortably marginal position on the border of the middle class, from which he can see the traditional possessors of privilege holding the better jobs and threatening his upward climb.