Briefly discuss on Look Back in Anger

In the post-war British drama, john Osbrne’s Look Back in Anger is an important name. How far, Osbrne’s literary position will be secured in the modern age remains, no doubt, a matter of disputes and conjectures, but his play Look Back in Anger is to be reckoned with carefully in the modern dramatic production.  The play performed first in the Royal Court Theatre in 1956, initiated a conspicuously new phase in the twentieth century English drama. 

The setting of the drama is the aftermath of the Second World War that has brought about frustration and depression among the newly rising educated community from the fairly humble social posting. The concept of the welfare state and the consequent educational opportunities to the young, ambitious members of this community proves ultimately illusory to them, with powers and positions still reserved for the privileged few. Their expectation of the rewards of the genuine meritocracy is rudely shocked by the continued eminence of the old aristocracy. The result is a sense of despondency and 3 feeling of wrong and wrath. The is the social milieu with which Osborne’s play is concerned. 

The hero of Osborn's ply is a young person, jimmy porter, belonging to a class of social inferiority. A provincial graduate of a humble social background, with energy and ambition, porter is married to a girl of an upper class family. He finds himself duped and turned a misfit in a social order that has so many promises but no sincere programme for the realization of the high ideal of the welfare state. This has caused in him deep disappointment and strong resentment against the establishment. Finding no proper outlet for his energy and ability and no scope for the fulfilment of his ambition he looks back in anger at the past and his anticipations. His anger makes him rather savage in his torture of her, well mannered, well brought up young wife. This wrathful, sadist mood of the angry young man is definitely a new theme of significance for the modern theatre. Osborne's play is found to open this new specimen of drama.

Osborne's Look back in Anger has a great bearing on the modern literary trend to represent the growing  frustration  and confusion  among the young people who find all heroic causes gone and no good,brave causes at all left. The picture is a penetrative truth of sadism and self-pity, and this is caught by osborne with an uncanny accuracy. 

Osborne's play is quite serious , meaningful. Even the title has immense significance and conveys a sense of frustration  that is deeply bound with nostalgia for a world that his young characters know almost nothing . Their ideal of life is empty, totally  confounded. This has a serious  lesson for the age. 

Finally ,  the play has a provincial  character  and the dramatic  dialogue  finely echoes  the same. The sharp,  taunting,  staccoto language of the hero in particular  has a new turn for the modern English dramatic dialogue.