Anger As A Major Thematic Concern in John Osborne'S Look Back in Anger and Inadmissible Evidence

ANGER AS A MAJOR
THEMATIC CONCERN
IN JOHN OSBORNE'S
LOOK BACK IN ANGER
AND INADMISSIBLE
EVIDENCE
M.Phil. Dissertation
By : Bhoomika patel
For: Dr R.K. Mandalia
JULY 2014
P.G DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
0 University
Sardar Patel
Vallabh vidyanagar, Gujarat, India
Chapter I
Introduction
Chapter I
Introduction
John Osborne, in full John James Osborne was born on 12 th
December 1929 in London of parents of very different backgrounds. He
was British Playwright, screenwriter, actor, critic and film producer
whose Look Back in Anger ushered in a new movement in British Drama
and made him known as the first of the "Angry young Man."
He was the son of Thomas Godfrey Osborne, a commercial artist
and advertising copywriter of south welsh extraction, his mother Nellie
Beatrice Grove belonged to a working class family, she was a cockney
barmaid. As he writes in his autobiography of his early years, entitled A
Better Class of person: An Autobiography: 1929-1956, about his
grandmother Adelina Rowena Grove, 'Almost every working day of her
life, she has not got up at five o' clock to work, to walk down what has
almost seemed to me to be the most hideous and coldest street in
London.' And her husband, William Crawford Grove, was the original of
Billy Rice in The Entertainer.
His early childhood spent at Fulham Palace Road and in 1935 the
working class family moved to the surrey suburb of stoneleigh near
Grandma Osborne's home in search of a better life, though Osborne
would regard it as a cultural desert a school friend declared subsequently
that " he thought we were a lot of dull, uninteresting people, and probably
a lot of us were." He was right, "He adored his father and hated his
mother," who he later wrote taught him " The Fatality of hatred she is
my disease, an invitation to my sick room," and described her as

"hypocritical, self-absorbed, calculating and indifferent."
In 1938 the family moved to Ewell bypass and there, when
Osborne was nine, he fell in love with Joan Buffen who was twelve. Both
Joan and her mother were much nicer to him than his own mother. As his
Autobiography records, ' Joan went out of her way to draw my attention
to sex' (p.64). Soon, however, she was off to boarding school. At Ewell
Boys School, young John disliked groups and crowds, and was very
uncomfortable, partly because he was frequently bullied. His only friend
and companion there was Viper Gang Club. His other important
entertainment was cinema, his 'Church and academy' (p.86) As A Better
Class of Person records, two events clouded his life at that time, 'For
years, I suffered the humiliation of being a fairly regular bed-wetter'
(p.36), As, ' to be exposed as one of these was dideous degradation' (p.90)
Like Jimmy Porter, Osborne spent hours watching his father die
without any moral support from 'Block Look', i.e. John's unpleasant and
irritable mother and Mrs.Osborne, Senior, who never mourned her son's
death. In 1941, Thomas left the young boy an insurance settlement which
he used to finance a private education at Belmont College, a minor public
school in Devon. He entered in school in 1943, but was expelled in the
summer term of 1945, after whacking the headmaster, who had stuck him
for listening to a forbidden broadcast by Frank Sinatra School certificate
was the only formal qualification he acquired, but he possessed a native
intelligence.
After school, Osborne went home to his mother in London and

drifted into journalism of sorts, working on the staff of the Gasworld and
The Miller. He first acted in No Room at the Inn, a skilful example of
music-hall drama, and worked as an Assistant stage Manager, In 1971, he
made his best remembered acting appearance, leading Cyril kinnear a
sense of Civil menace in Get Carter. In 1978 he appeared as an actor in
Tomorrow Never Comes and in 1980 in Flash Gordon. Osborne also
played the role of shropshire squire with great pleasure and heavy dose of
irony.
He had a brief affair with Sheila, a ' juvenile' actress, than he
developed an intimacy with Stella Linden who not only became his
mistress for some time, but also tried actively to help him write plays.
Her husband Patrick Desmond, had a commercial view of play-writing,
and when Osborne's first play, Resting Deep , was completed, Stella
suggested that he should write plays of the Coward and Rattigan variety.
Resting Deep was changed to The Devil Inside Him. However, they were
unable to work on a play, and, unemployed, were forced to take on jobs in
restaurants.
During his second stint as an Assistant Stage Manager, The Devil
Inside Him was first produced at the Theatre Royal on Easter Monday
1950. When he joined the saga Reportory Company, he began the article
partnership with Anthony Creighton which after Personal Enemy a
fumbling work about a soldier who refuses to be repatriated from
captivity in Korea, finally blossomed into a creative Collaboration of
writing Epitaph for George Dillon.
4
In the meantime, John met and fell in love with an actress from the
theatre company, Pamela Lane, they two married in secret in nearly walls
and then left Bridgewater. The first catastrophe of the marriage was the
loss of an unborn child. John moved from company to company, unable
to hold any acting job for any length of time. The first marriage came to
an end in 1954 when Pamela went on holiday to Switzerland with a
dentist from Derby. Even as he began work on Epitaph for George Dillon,
he heard from Lane voicing her feeling that she must get away.
Work on Look Back in Anger began on 4 May 1955 and was
finished within a month on 3 June. Look Back in Anger, as will be shown
in the following sections, shocked the audience by the novelty of its
content, though its form did not break out of the confines of the
conventional realistic well-made play.
While British theatre was busy with restaging Restoration
Comedies and Elizabethan Plays and verse drama in Europe the epic
theatre of Bertold Brecht, the holy theatre of Antonin Artaud, and the
absurd theatre of Eugene Ionesco were being praised in 40s and 50s.
However, the influences of these writers were only fully absorbed in
England around 60s and 70s. Meanwhile in The United States of America
realist and naturalist plays of Arthur Miller, Tennesse Williams and
O'Neill, which did not get staged in London, were praised in America by
Americans.
One of the main reasons for Osborne's having a different place in

British scene might be because of the fact that he was among the
pioneering playwrights of Britain to become aware of the changes in the
theatre abroad England.
May critics have regarded Look Back in Anger as a turning point in
the history of twentieth century British theatre owing to its choice of
topics from social and political circumstances of its time, its lowermiddle and working- class characters, its realistic setting and its everyday
language.
After the world war II, people believed that theatre was rapidly
decline and most of the theatres were closed. Some of the theatres were
restaged the previous plays and Restoration comedies, some trying to
restore Elizabethan drams. But Osborne's Look Back in Anger gave spark
to reopen the theatre with new rebellious thoughts with realist way. This
play mostly appeal to the audience under the age of thirty. The immediate
shock for the audience and readers of Look Back in Anger pay in the
impact of its setting, it is :
" a one-room flat in a large midland
Town a fairly large attic room most of the
furniture is simple, and rather old. Up R. is a
doble bed, a shelf of books. Down R. below
the bed is a heavy chest of drawers, covered
with books neckties and odds and ends a
small wardrobe two deep shabby leather
armchairs. "
(Look Back in Anger p.01)

6
Epitaph for George Dillon (1958) was the only realistic play he
wrote during his early years. This work with a clear autobiographical
element, despite its being a collaboration with Creighton, focuses on the
story of an artist, George Dillon, who compromises with his art and in the
process loses his integrity.
The play succeeding Look Back in Anger in production, The
Entertainer (1957), is a genuine departure from fourth wall realism. The
story is about a music-hall performer Archie Rice, first played by the late
sir Laurence Olivier. Archie's father Billy was a nostalgia for Edwardian
values. The Entertainer creates 'alienation', reminding the audience
unmistakably and continually that it is watching a play rather than a slice
of life.
The important event that took place in Osborne's life was in 1857
when he and Pamela Lane divorced in April and the following month he
married Mary Ure, who acted the role of Alison in Look Back in Anger.
From his second wife, Osborne has a son Colin and there was infidelity
on both sides and after an affair with Robert Webber, Mary Ure
ultimately left Osborne for Robert Shaw and divorced with Osborne in
1962.
The World of Paul Slickey (1959), a musical, exposed the world of
journalism and simultaneously attacked the aristocracy, the clergy and the
British Empire as a whole. A Subject of Scandal and Concern (1960)
concentrates on the prosecution and punishment in 1842 of George
Holyoake.
Luther (1961), the most impressive of his plays of this phase,

dramatizes the career of Martin Luther as sketched by Erik H. Erikson in
his 'psychobiography' young man Luther. The play traces Luther's
psycho-sexual development according to the model proposed by Erikson.
The techniques used in the play reveal a fine Combination of
Expressionistic and Epic devices. Osborne won the New York Drama
critics circle Award for Look Back in Anger and for Luther in 1961.
Under Plain Cover (1962) concentrates on a couple, Tim and Jenny.
Initially their world of love is manifested in a number of roles they are
discovered playing as in Pinter's Lovers.
The Blood of the Bambergs , a Companion play, made an
audacious satirical reference to Princess Margaret's wedding to a
photographer. Inadmissible Evidence (1964) presents in a dream
sequence- in the manner of Arthur miller's contemporary play about
another lawyer Quentin, After the Fall- the anxieties and guilt of Bill
Maitland. Indeed a couple of years after the play was first produced,
Osborne himself cracked up like his hero, and ended up in hospital with a
nervous breakdown. As Osborne's biographer John Heilpern has written,
"Inadmissible Evidence became on extraordinary act of prophecy for John
Osborne."
Inadmissible Evidence was published by Faber and Faber in 1965.
The first performance of Inadmissible Evidence at the Royal Court
Theatre in London on September 9, 1964, by the English stage Company,
was a resounding critical and popular success. It also reinforced John
Osborne's status as England's most important post-world war II dramatist.
8
John Osborn won the plays and players Best New Play Award in 1964 for
Inadmissible Evidence and Tony Award in 1964 for Luther; an Academy
Award for best adopted screenplay in 1963 for Tom Jones.
Johan Osborne won the Evening Standard Drama Award for the
most promising playwright of the year for A Patriot for me in 1965, this
play similarly uses a number of short scenes. Based on 'fact', it covered a
significant phase of history in its dramatization of the military career of
Alfred Redl, a homosexual, in the Austor-Hungarian Army and his
blackmail by a Russian Intelligence unit led by Col.oblensky,
Culminating in his suicide.
Osborne met his third wife, writer Penelope Gilliatt, initially
through social connections and then interviewed him. They were married
for five years (together for seven), in which time she bore him. Osborne
had an abusive relationship with his daughter, Nolan kate, he cast her out
of his house when she was seventeen. Osborne and Gilliatt's marriage
suffered through what Osborne perceived to be an unnecessary obsession
on her part with her work, writing film reviews for The Observer. They
divorced in 1968 and he married the actress Jill Bennett the same year.
The Hotel in Amsterdam (1968), unlike the early works, deals
with 'a group of people in a particular situation.' This play won the
Evening standard Drama Award for the most promising Playwright of
the year in 1968. This play also won the plays and players Best New
Play Award in 1968.
This play is conventional realistic play, it is set in a suite in a large

first class hotel in Amsterdam in which three English couples, Laurie and
Margaret, Gus and Annie, and Dan and Amy, arrive for a holiday weekend.
West of Suez (1971), though initially compared with shaw's
Heartbreak House, is a straightforward realistic play, dramatizing the
holiday that a writer, Whyatt Gilman-played by sir Ralph Richardson
takes on a sub-tropical ex-colonial island with his four daughters.
A Sense of Detachment (1972) is perhaps the most self-reflexive of
Osborne's works, probing questions about artistic and dramatic illusions
in an almost Pirandellian fashion and with reference to fragments of his
own autobiography. The play refers to many contemporary playwrights
and theatre personalities such as Harold Pinter, Arnold Wesker, David
Storey, Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett and Joan Littlewood, but
surprisingly there is no discussion of their dramaturgy. More sensational
events constitute the core of Watch it Come Down published in 1975.
Ben, the renowned field director, and Sally, his dilettante second wife,
fight their sordid, violent battles in the presence of a set of guests. The
action with all the violence and the promiscuous lovemaking's of
characters in the country setting again recalls show's Heartbreak House.
Arnold this time came another turning point in Osborne's career,
Perhaps it was not merely a coincidence that in 1977 he divorced Jill
Bennett and married Helen Dawson, a journalist and critic for The
Observer. Osborne had earlier written TV plays and adapted other
10
author's works, he now switched almost entirely to TV plays and

adaptations of other works.
In the first TV play of the period, The Right Prospectus (1970), the
Newbolds, a childless couple, enroll in a school without anyone noticing
their age or sex. This surpasses Strindberg in his Dream play which had
shown the officer doing his tables and sums in an expressionistic scene.
In Very Like a Whale published in 1971, The hero, like the typical
Osborne protagonist of the 60s, finds it impossible to communicate and
establish any kind of meaningful relationship with those who matter his
wife and present family, his sister Jan, his father, his ex-wife Barbara and
his son from her.
In Jill and Jack (1975) which focuses on the man-woman
relationship, the traditional roles are reversed as Jill Looks after Jack and
protects him instead of being the shy, shattered girlfriend You're Not
Watching Me, Mummy (1978) again concentrates on a theatrical
performer, focusing on her professional life.
Try a Little Tenderness (1978) takes up a writer Ted Shilling as
the central character. These TV plays have concentrated on some of
Osborne's typical characters aliens, actors, writers and discordant
couples. Osborne's major adaptations also have as protagonists
characters who are intense or alienated or rebellious as in many works
about actors or writers.
A Bond Honoured (1966) which is reworking of Lope de Vega's La
Fianza Satisfecha , is a story of extraordinary violence, centered around
the character of Leonido. Osborne has intensified the magnitude of his
11
outrageous acts even as he has reduced the original three act play to two
acts. The production was highly 'stylized' with 'most of the play's actors
being symbolically rendered in semi-darkness.
Osborne's Hedda Gabler (1972) is not really different from a
translation of Ibsen's masterpiece. Osborne changed the name Jorgen to
George, the house becomes the house of the Prime Minister and the other
changes-all major-concern only individual sentences and phrases in
dialogue.
An overview of Osborne's plays reveals interesting continuities as
well as developments. Thus the autobiographical details which are so
prominent in the early plays gradually diminish till Osborne returns to
them only in A Sense of Detachment.
Some of the characters, especially in the early works, play roles
and indulge in literary parody, either to get away from their predicament
or to escape into a world of fantacy. The topic recurse in A Sense of
Detachment in which the motif is explored in a self-reflexive, almost
Pirandellian fashion. The play also gathers in itself many of Osborne's
early experiments in technique : direct addresses to the audience; use of
songs, music and dance ; literary allusions. However Expressionism and
the devices of the Epic Theatre, which are abandoned after Inadmissible
Evidence.
It wasn't until after Osborne's death in 1994 that his confessional
and disturbing private notebooks were discovered. Life had turned sweet
for Osborne after Look Back in Anger, he made this startling entry in a
notebook dated July 1959:
12
" I am governed by fear every day of my

life, Sometimes it is the first sensation I have on
waking... fear in love. Fear of being deserted,
fear of being involved I am afraid of the dark
hole and the pain that grips me every day. It is
fear and I can not rid myself of it. It numbs me,
it sterilizes me, and I am empty, dumb, ignorant
and afraid."
Osborne wrote on significant stage plays of his own in the eighties
and one had begun to think that he had perhaps reached the end of the
road as stage dramatist. But then in 1992 came Dejavu, a sequel to Look
Back in Anger.
It can be asserted that, as Osborne himself claims, he might not be
a member of the 'angry young men' whereas it is for sure that Jimmy is an
angry young man and the theme of anger is evident in Look Back in
Anger most of the central characters of Osborne's later plays are having
something in common in the sense that they are, like Jimmy, angry about
the conditions they are in. Osborne deals with the theme of anger in his
later plays as on expression of the other themes such as frustration, lack
of communication, alienation, search for compassion and love,
disillusionment, suffering, despair and self-pity.
Jimmy Porter and Bill Maitland's situation and their restless life
force them to be resentment to their family and others which results into
excessive aggressiveness as major thematic aspect of both the plays.
13
We can define the dictionary meaning anger is "a violent,

revengeful emotion that one feels about on action or situation which one
considers unacceptable, unfair, cruel or insuting and about the person
responsible for it."
Psychologists agree with the fact that anger is an emotional status
of mind of a person in which intensity from mild irritation to rage and
fury that might lead to aggressive behavior. Through the aggressive
behaviour one can express wrath to others. Aggressive behaviour
"intended to harm (physical or non physical) another individual.
It is sufficient to note that Freud thought that human behaviour,
including violent behaviour, was the product of "unconscious" force
operating within a person's mind Freud also felt that early childhood
experiences had a profound impact on adolescent and adult behaviour.
Freud for example, believed that conflicts that occur at various
psychosexual stages of development might on individual's ability to
operate normally as on adult.
Returning to our point it can be observed that the characters of
Osborne are angry and aggressive on account of several reasons. Jimmy
Porter, the protagonist of Look Back in Anger and Bill Maitland, of
Inadmissible Evidence, they frequently get angry with the people around
them.
Consequently, this dissertation is going to analyse the underlying
theme of anger in terms of the psychoanalytic theory and the frustrationaggression hypothesis from Look Back in Anger (1956) to Osborne's later
play namely Inadmissible Evidence by researching or investigating the
14
reasons for the protagonists rage, considering anger as an emotional state

aroused specially by frustration and the ways of expressing anger
regarding aggressive behaviour as a defense mechanism to prevent selfdestruction. This research will also focus and analyse the situation of
protagonists through which they suffered.
15
Chapter-II
Anger as an Emotional
State of Mind
16
CHAPTER-II
Anger as an Emotional
State of Mind
Here, in this second chapter of my dissertation, I want to generalize
the term 'Anger' and its consequences, its way of effecting to the human
life. Mainly the anger is psychological term associated with mind. Anger
is considered as the emotional state that intervenes between the thwarting
and expression of angry and aggressive acts. Anger is an emotion
characterized by antagonism towards someone or something you feed has
deliberately done you wrong. Anger can be a good thing, it can give you a
way to express negative feelings, it can be proved revolutionary to make
change in present situation. It also motivate to find the solutions to
problems. But excessive anger can cause problems, with anger it is
difficult to think straight and harm your physical and mental health.
Anger can be a tricky emotion because it's often covering up other
issues. Anger is used as a sort of mask to cover up the true feelings like
fear, jealoury, frustration, etc. There is always something behind anger.
Anger doesn't really come by itself, it is always attached to another
emotion.
There can be many reasons for experiencing the emotional state of
anger.
17
Fear
Fear
Manipulati
Manipulati
on
on
Powerlessn
Powerlessn
ess
ess
Hurt
Hurt
Frustration
Frustration
Ten
Ten Reasons
Reasons
For
Raising.
For Raising.
Anger
Anger
Approval
Approval
Seeking
Seeking
Pain
Pain From
From
the
the Past
Past
Jealousy
Jealousy
Feeling
Feeling
overwhelm
overwhelm
ed/
ed/
exhausted
exhausted
Bad
Bad Habit
Habit
(Cantherine Pratt : www.life-with-confidence.com)

The described ten reasons are responsible to produce anger, behind
anybody's violence or abusive language, these are main force to act in
aggressive manger.
In, Look Back in Anger Jimmy is powerless that he can't change his
life which bored and irritated him. He lives the same steady life. He has
frustrated because of the past events that made his life miserable. Jimmy
18
was exhausted with the British class discrimination that he could not
make any change in it.
In, Inadmissible Evidence also there is a character Bill Maitland
who was powerless to prove his existence which made him frustrated
with situation. He himself tell to the judge that he is "incapable of
making decisions."
(Inadmissible Evidence p-6)
There are multiple reasons behind Jimmy and Bill's anger. There is
also positive way of anger but those ways are not proved fruitful to our
characters. There situation become bad to worst.
Positive way of Anger
Anger is a motivating force

Angry people are more optimistic
Anger can benefit relationships
Anger Provides self-insight

Anger Reduces violence
Anger as negotiation strategy
PSYBLOG
(Understanding your mind by Jeremy Dean Pub.on 6, March 2012)
19
These are the ways which positively proves helpful to person to

rebel but for both the characters Jimmy Porter and Bill Maitland the
emotion of anger proves negative rather than positive. Through such
firing emotion Jimmy and Bill hurt their family members as well as
abused their environment. Their emotion of anger nothing proved to be
positive to them. As Anger is just like coin having two sides bad and
good, Jimmy and Bill having bad side of coin or bad side of anger which
make them frustrated in their life.
Anger can be considered as a secondary emotion because we tend
to resort to anger in order to protect ourselves from other vulnerable
feelings. We almost always feel something else first before we get angry.
We might first feel afraid, attacked, offended, disrespected, forced,
trapped or pressured. If any of these feelings are intense enough, we think
the emotion as anger.
As the drawing below illustrates, anger is like an iceberg in that only
some of the emotions are visible. The other emotions exist " below the water
line" where they are not immediately observed by the outside observers.
(Men for change, The online Healthy Relationship Project, 1998)

20
Anger is just like iceberg it can not be seen how it is deep rooted, it
can not easily come out at sudden situation. It raises slowly and gradually,
behind such anger there reasons like humiliation, hurt, scared, rejection,
frustration etc. Jimmy and Bill's lives are the same, their anger can be
seen throughout the work but as a reader or audience we have to draw out
such reason behind their anger as we will see in further chapters.
According to the frustration-aggression hypothesis the main reason
that produces anger is frustration. The emotions of isolation, alienation,
anxiety, loneliness, rejection also trigger frustration, causes angry
feelings. The word frustration is one of the many psychological concepts,
has used in many different ways. Frustration frequently lead to anger and
aggression.
According to Dollard, "Aggression is always a consequence of
frustration" (Frustration and aggression 1939 p.01). We can see in Look
Back in Anger, that how Jimmy frustrated and he become aggressive in
his behaviour as aggression is the result of frustration. The below
conversation described the aggressive behaviour of Jimmy:
[Jimmy makes a frantic, deliberate effort, and
manages to push cliff on to the ironing board, and into
Alison. The board collapses. Cliff falls against her, and they
end up in a heap on the floor. Alison cries out in pain. Jimmy
look down at them, dazed and breathless.]
Cliff : (Picking himself up) she's hurt, are you all right ?
Alison : Well, does it look like it !
21
Cliff : She's burnt her arm on the iron.

Jimmy : Darling, I'm sorry
Alison : Get out !
(Look Back in Anger pp.21-22)
Frustration is defined as a state that sets in if a goal oriented act is

delayed or thwarted. Under this frustrating conditions aggressive
behaviour is stimulated inorder to achieve the desired goal. Aggression is
defined as the deliberate violation, directed toward the cause of
frustration, but may be redirected toward any other people or object.
Frustration- Aggression, corresponds with the following two
postulates;
I
Aggressive behaviour requires the existence of frustration and,
ii
The existence of frustration leads to some kind of aggressive

behaviour.
Aggression is also a means by which people establish their identity.
Identity requires opposition, which is manifested through aggression. For

Lorenz and Freud, human aggression is largely negative and destructive.
Desire for control over a situation may provoke a person to attack
another. In total, then, aggression is a style, an offensive manifestation of
power.
Definition of aggression is fairly straightforward: The term refered
to any "sequence of behaviour, the goal-response to which is the injury of
the person toward whom it is directed." (Frustration and aggression 1939,
p.9) If someone remains fail to reach a desired goal can produce an
instigation to aggression. The inability to achieve the desired and
expected goal is intensified the one's aggressive tendencies.
22
Aggression can take many forms but it is defined as any action that
is aimed at causing either physical or psychological pain to oneself, to
others or to objects in the environment. The expression of aggression can
occur in a number of ways, including verbally, mentally and physically.
We can see the verbal aggressive behaviour of Jimmy is below dialogue.
"Jimmy : Only in the mating season. All right, all right, very
funny (He tries to escape, but cliff hold him like a vice.)
Cliff : Not until you've apologized for being nasty to
everyone. Do you think bosoms will be in or out, this year ?
Jimmy : Your teeth will be out in a minute, if you don't let
go! "
There are several categories of aggression and violence including,

hostile aggression, protective aggression, instrumental aggression and
rage. Aggression may be a response to many number of factors including
fear, pain, threat, invasion, lack of control, inadequacy or frustration.
Berkowitz claims "psychological discomfort can produce the
aggression activating negative affect." (Examination and Reformulation
p.70) Jimmy both loves and despises Alison, attaches himself to he while
rejecting her social origins. He does not like Alison's middle class manners
and friends and he makes fun of them: "Oh dear, Oh dear ! My wife's
friends ! Pass Lady Bracknell the cucumber Sandwiches, will you ?"
According to Berkowitz frustration is defined as the inability to
satisfy one's wishes. It can be said that by making a set Bill puts his own
23
barrier not reach his desires and he prevents himself from fulfilling his
wishes. Therefore, Bill causes his own frustration. Since he is the reason
for his alienation, isolation and frustration, his anger turns into an inner
rage.
It can be said that frustration frequently lead to anger and
aggression. According to the frustration aggression hypothesis Jimmy has
not a suitable job despite his university degree can be considered a
"frustration produced instigation." Thought the play Jimmy rails about
politics, religion and other social institutions. Jimmy feels betrayed by the
previous generation because his generation is experiencing the
disappointment of world war II. However, Jimmy is looking for some
enthusiasm instead of exhaustion. because he had a father who believed
that there were still, even after the slaughter of the world war, causes
good enough to fight for and collective actions worthy of individual
support. He claims:
" I suppose people of our generation aren't able to die
for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us, in
the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids, There
aren't any good, brave causes left. If the big band does
come, and we all get killed off, it won't be in aid of the oldfashioned, grand design. It'll just be for the Brave Newnothing- very- much- thank- you. About as pointless and
inglorious as stepping in front of a bus."
24
Because of timidness of Alison, Lack of enthusiasm in Jimmy's

life, Jimmy from the very beginning expresses the 'Vacousness of his own
life' he utters:
"God, how I hate sundays ! It's always so depressing,
always the same. We never seem to get any further, do we ?
Always the same ritual. Reading the papers, drinking tea,
ironing A few more hours, and another week gone. Our
youth is slipping away. Do you know that ? Oh heavens,
how I long for a little Ordinary enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm
that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry
Hallelujah ! I'm alive ! I have an idea Oh, brother, it's
such a long time since I was anyone who got enthusiastic
about anything."
At the beginning of his speech about 'not having any brave causes'
Jimmy seems to find the one whom he can but the blame on for his
frustration and anger:
" Why, why, why, why do we left
these woman bleed us to death ?...
No, there's nothing left for it,
me boy, but to let yourself
be butchered by the women."
Jimmy is so much displeased with his static situation, his inner

rage raises because of his political disappointment, British class
discrimination, his weak economic situation etc. Besides all these he
25
tolerated Alison's timidity and her passive response to him, she made
herself away from the quarreling with Jimmy and remained all the time
silent, doing her domestic work. Alison having lack of enthusiasm
irritates Jimmy. Jimmy feels that Alison remains silent deliberately
inorder to make him angry. Her timidity can be regarded as a reaction to
Jimmy's aggressive behaviour.
According to Berkowitz's frustration aggression hypothesis, "every
frustration increases the instigation to aggression which is anger. Anger
is the primary inborn reaction to thwarting." (Aggression p.47) As a
result, Jimmy is angry because he is frustrated. Thus, the anger can be
considered as emotional state of Jimmy's mind which lead him to he
aggressive behaviour towards others.
Jimmy was also dissatisfied with the sociopolitical events of the
time like Bill, however his difference from Bill is the fact that he was
listened to when he expressed his ideas. He could take to his best friend
Cliff or Alison's friend Helena. However, Bill has no one to share his
inner feelings. He himself admits that he is in need of friends. It can be
claimed that Bill's anger towards the outside world turns into an inner
rage as the play develops. He begins to realize his own downfall however
he can't do anything to change it. This helpessness leads Bill to frustration
and anger.
The Play Inadmissible Evidence, dealt with the full of monologues
of Bill which reflects his inner soul, his inner desire. He lacked the
communication with others which reflect in the opening of the play as it
started with dream of Bill. It is said that if a person's aspiration can't be
26
fulfilled in his original life, he starts dreaming about his desires, goals
and about future, person's isolation leads him to talk to himself in dream
to control him situation.
The play opens with Bill's nightmare which hints at his downfall.
Bill sees himself in a dream-courtroom in which he is the prisoner being
accused of "having unlawfully and wickedly published and made known,
and made published and made known, and made known, and caused to
be procured and made known, a wicked, bawdy, and scandalous object."
(Inadmissible Evidence p.3)
According to freud's psychoanalytic theory of dreams ego
continues to try to solve conflicts in dreams. That is, "the mind takes the
problem and weaves it into a dream. If ego can not solve the problem
the dream turns into a nightmare." (Basic Principles of Psychoanalysis
p.58, A.A. Brill)
Bill's nightmare can be called an 'anxiety dream' since this type of
dreams reflect one's inner fears. He is afraid of the fact that his
dependency and isolation would be noticed by the people around him.
It can be asserted that Bill has difficulties in controlling his
libidonal energy. His dependence on alcoholic can be given as a futile
attempt to control his libidonal energy since he has become almost an
alcoholic. He himself admits in his dream that he drinks too much:
" I had too much to drink last
Night, that's just the simple
" I had too much to drink last
night, that's just the simple
27
truth of it well, I do drink

quite a lot. I'm what you'd
called a serious drinker
I can drink a whole bottle
of whisky still I'm pretty
strong, I must be Otherwise,
I couldn't take it. That is,
if I can take it. "
(Inadmissible Evidence p-9)
Bill's addiction to alcohol can also be considered as a way to

escape from the bitter reality that he is too weak and impotent to take
control of his own life because of his dependency on other people. He
does not want to be sober enough to see and face the reality.
Bill's real decline begins with the first morning on which the real
action starts. He tells his managing clerk, Hudson, that for first time in his
life he could not get a taxi. And he adds that he did not get a good
morning from the caretaker. He says:
"Things seem a bit odd. I still can't understand why I
couldn't get a taxi. They all had their lights on-for hire. And
he caretaker turned his back on me I was going to ask him
you know, quite politely- why the lift wasn't working. And he
turned his back on me. "
It can be claimed that Maitland is aware of his troubles, however

since he can not do anything to solve them his anxieties intensify and lead
him to total frustration. Therefore, he gets angry both with himself and with
his colleagues at the office. And, he tries to escape from his problems by
drinking alcohol, taking pills, and making love to he women around him.
28
As it has been foreshadowed in his dream trail Bill has dependency

on other people especially on his wife, Anna. For the first time Bill
confesses to Liz on the phone that fact his existence is dependent on his
wife. He says:
" I'm frightened It was as if I only existed because
of her, because she allowed me to, but if she turned off the
switch who knows ? But if she'd turned it off I'd have been
dead They would have passed me by like a blank hoarding
or tombstone, or waste ground by the railway line?
It can be claimed that Bill's clients also help to become aware of
his downfall on account of the fact that they in a way function as mirrors
of his situation. With Mrs.Garnsey he realizes the fact that he has been
ignored and deserted. With Mrs.Tonks, his second client who wanted to
divorce because of her husband's excessive sexual appetite, Bill becomes
aware of the fact that women in his life are adandoning him due to his
extreme demend for sexual intercourse. With Mrs. Anderson Bill realizes
his inability to communicate, therefore his alienation and loneliness. His
last client, Maples, who is young married man charged with homosexual
behaviour, makes Bill aware of his own situation as an outsider trapped in
an unhappy marriage.
Bill's encounter with his daughter, Jane, can be regarded as the last
straw in his realization of isolation due to her coldness and indifference.
He knows that he is not loved by this daughter. And he tells her that he is
29
neither loved by his own partner nor his wife's parents. He pours all his
anger due to his frustration on his daughter when he says:
"They're all pretending to ignore me. No they're not
pretending, they are ! [] There isn't any place for me, not
like you. In the law, in the country, or, indeed, in any place in
this city."
(Inadmissible Evidence pp.98-99)
Bill Maitland is frustrated and angry mainly because although he

has become aware of his own alienation, isolation and dependency due to
his weakness and inability to prove his existence by his own efforts, he
can not do anything to solve it.
Both the plays of Osborne having theme of anger but the same
theme shows the paradoxical situation between both characters' life that
Jimmy Porter having company of his wife Alison, friend Cliff and also
Helena who is Alison's friend but Jimmy becomes wrath with them during
conversation within them. The thing is different with Bill Maitland that he
seeks love of wife and daughter, seeks friendship and communication with
others. He becomes angry just because of their absence.
Thus it can be said that the presence of anybody's company and
absence of anybody's company both irritates man in different situation.
Actually man has no peace at all anywhere in his life. It is an emotional
state of Jimmy and Bill that they got angry with others, there are number
of reasons behind their anger. We will see the different elements and
reasons of both the elements and reasons of both the heroes anger in
further chapters.
30
Chapter- III
Elements of Anger in
Look Back in Anger
31
Chapter- III
Elements of Anger in Look Back in Anger
This third chapter is going to examine the different elements of
anger in play Look Back in Anger which can be considered as major
theme of the play. This expression of anger can be defined as aggression.
Jimmy is so much frustrated which arouse in him emotion of anger and
his feeling of anger leads him verbally and physically aggressive to
Alison.
For Freud, expression of aggression is a defense mechanism in the
sense that people aggress against the outer world in order not to destroy
their inner selves. Aggression can be considered as an instinctual drive
that should be released by the kind of aggressive behaviour.
Anger can be virtue and it can be a dangerous vice. A moralist will
say that anger is good when it is selfless, compassionate, and allied to
positive action, and that it is evil when it is selfish and tainted with
frustration, malice, and the desire to destroy. A creative artist depecting
this emotion is more likely to be aware of the ways in which anger hovers
between these two poles in most men and situation.
The leading character of the present play, Jimmy porter is about
twenty five years young angry man belongs to working class. Though
Jimmy is an 'intellectual' university chap, he is unable to find a job of his
choice. He reveals his dissatisfaction about the kind of occupation he is
forced to do. He tried many things journalism, advertising, even vacuum
cleaner for a few weeks which doesn't suit him and he runs sweetstall.
32
Jimmy remains stict to his position of running sweetstall as he thought

that British government would not treat his generation according to their
merits.
Jimmy can be considered as frustrated artist, a repressed
homosexual, a sadomasochist, a self-pitying egoist, an idealist without a
cause.
No doubt that it is said to revolt with rage may change the situation
and matter will be in our hand but the thing is different with Jimmy as he
is so much frustrated and gets angry with his wife, friend, British
institution of contemporary time and his own situation but his anger
would not make any changes to his life.
Everything in his life dissatisfies him, and the tone of his
conversation, which is mainly a monologue, is consistently one of railing
and complaint. The principal sufferer from all these is his wife Alison
whom be can not forgive for her upper-middle class background and
whom he constantly torments in order to extract some reaction from her
and to bring her to knees, while she, having discovered that her only
defense is to remain unperturbed, refuses to react as long as she can.
Jimmy directly showers his hatred and anger towards upper middle-class
Alison, the weaker object, who less able to react to any hostility. Jimmy's
main target of aggressive behaviour becomes Alison who suffers both
psychologically and physically.
According to one critic, this play was not intended to mirror the
state of post-war society but to analyse a perverse marriage. According to
this view, Jimmy's problem is not the vicious injustice and hypocrisy of
33
the social order but the desire to possess a woman's complete,

unquestioning love, and his simultaneous inability to get along with any
one. But this view is too narrow to cover the entire scope of the play
which has, indeed, a wide range.
Jimmy bullies, taunts, and humiliates Alison and her parents,
friends and manners as the play develops. He is leading a routine,
monotonous life which offers no thrills in life, no excitement, no variety.
He hates sundays because Sundays depress him by their sameness. This is
how he grumbles about the monotony of Sundays:
" Jimmy : God, how I hate Sundays ! It's always so
depressing, always the same. We never seem to get any
further, do we ? Always the same ritual. Reading the papers,
drinking tea, ironing. A few more hours, and another week
gone. Our youth is slipping away. Do you know that ? "
While reading newspapers he wants immediate reply or active
response from Alison with him but Alison doing her domestic work of
ironing, she is not responding to Jimmy and answer him that she has not
read it yet. Jimmy goes on asking about newspaper to Alison until Cliff
tells him to leave her alone. He gets angry and asks:
"Jimmy : Well, she can talk, can't she ? you can talk,
can't you ? you can express an opinion; or does the white
woman's Burden make it impossible to think ?"
34
Jimmy is finished his reading of news paper and waiting for

exchange of paper with Cliff and Jimmy scolds Cliff and Alison for being
ignorant, he discusses about the Bishop of Bromley and he says:
"Damm you, damm both of you, damm them all. I
know you're going to drive me mad."
Jimmy feels irritated by the general apathy and mental inertness of
Alison and Cliff, his friend. The callousness of contemporary society is
obvious through Jimmy's long vicious speeches, such as:
"Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human
enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm- that's all. I want to hear a
warm, thrilling voice, cry out, Halleujah ! Halleujah ! I'm
alive.
The absence of human feelings of love, fellow-feeling, tolerance of

that time expressed through Jimmy's angry speeches, he complains:
"Nobody thinks, nobody cares No beliefs, no
conviction and no enthusiasm." (Look Back in Anger p.10)
This can be considered as major element of Jimmy's anger as
nobody cares for him, he needs active participation of Cliff and Alison in
his conversation, lack of enthusiasm on the part of Alison and Cliff, hates
Jimmy Porter a lot.
Jimmy hates Alison's family members, friends and their manners of
being upper-middle class. He humiliates Nigal and Alison;
35
"They're
what
they
sound
like:
Sycophantic,
phlegmatic and Pusillanimous." (Look Back in Anger p.16)

Jimmy uses completely abusing language for his wife's brother
Nigel, in presence of Alison and Cliff which hurts Alison so much. He
describes Nigel as, "The straight-backed, chinless wonder from
sandhurst" (14) and says that "His knowledge of life and ordinary human
beings is so hazy," that "The only thing he can do-seek sanctuary in his
own stupidity." (Look Back in Anger p.15)
Jimmy makes so many mocking and disparaging comments on
Alison that sometimes Alison closes her eyes in sheer dismay and
helplessness. He refers to Alison as 'lady Pusillanimaus.' He gave a long
description on the meaning of pusillanimous. He finds fault with her for
being 'a monument to non-attachment;
Even though Jimmy abuses Alison's brother and gives sarcastic
remarks to her family, friends and manners, she does not give any direct
reaction against Jimmy's aggressive behaviour. She prefers to remain
silent. It can be claimed that Alison reacts passively against Jimmy's
verbal attacks and provocations. As the stage direction says:
"Jimmy watches her, waiting for her to break. For no,
more than a flash, Alison's face seems to contort, and it looks
as though she might throw her head back, and scream. But it
passes in a moments. She is used to these carefully rehearsed
attacks, and it doesn't look as though he will get his triumph
tonight. She carries on with her ironing."
36
This way she doesn't react but shows her passive aggressiveness to
Jimmy by ironing clothes all the time. She makes herself busy in doing
so, as this act protect her from Jimmy's rage. She knows that if she knows
that if she gives any reaction to his attacks he will be triumphant.
Ironing symbolically suggests to crease out, means to set up
everything smoothly. Alison thinks that the way ironing vanishes the
crease from clothes, the same way one day her all agony and Jimmy's
anger would be subsided but the thing is different with Jimmy. It is a
contradictory that the hot iron can crease out the clothes as Alison ironing
them but the aggressive behaviour of Jimmy could not solve all the
problems of his life. There is no change in his life eventhough he gets
angry with his wife, friends, and his own situation.
According to Gilleman the play "consists of a series of
withdrawals (on the part of Jimmy)" (76) ( "The Logic of Anger and
Despair " John Osborne: A Casebook.)
Alison's submissive and silent manner against Jimmy's assaults
proves that she doesn't react but it can be considered as passive
aggressive behaviour which does not invite retaliation since the apponent
can't decide whether there is an aggression as not. The submissive
behaviour of Alison works as a disguised form of aggressive behaviour
which she uses to protect herself against her husband's attacks.
It is said that to ignore is the best way to irritate someone and this
ignorance can also be considered as a weapon in order to save herself
from Jimmy's assaults, she totally ignores his speech and abusing words
and gives reason to Cliff for not listening Jimmy:
37
" I pretended not to be listening And- of course- he

got savage But I knew just what he meant. I suppose it
would have been so easy to things that seem to be so
impossible with us."
Jimmy not only verbally attacks on Alison and her brother but also
the other family members and her friends. He calls her parents "militant,
arrogant and full of malice" (Look Back in Anger p.14) He labels her
friends "sychophantic, phlegmatic, and, of course, top of the billpusillanimours." (Look Back in Anger p.49). This way he reveals
aggressive attitude towards them.
And it is said that one has to remain silent when the two flames of
anger burn together as we have multiple examples of it in literature, one
is noticeable from Homer's epic poem; Iliad"Force against force, for no common honour befalls"
(ILIAD p.7)
This line is used for Achilles and Agamemnon who were got angry
and indulged in verbal fight with eachother for prize. There also Achilles
has to tame his anger, he handed his prize to Agamemnon and
surrendered himself which subside the anger of Agamemnon.
The same way Alison's passive, response to Jimmy can be
considered as Alison's effort to subside Jimmy's anger.
We can see how Alison afraid of Jimmy's anger as Cliff advices
Alison to inform about her pregnancy to Jimmy but Alison frightened to
face this situation because she thinks that Jimmy would suspect on her
38
motives as she thinks that Jimmy has his own morality. Alison here also
mentions that Jimmy taunted on her virginity and gets wretched about it.
Alison never deceived him but Jimmy thinks as if she deceived him in a
strange way. Therefore Alison scared to inform about her pregnancy to
Jimmy.
John Osborne depicts the existing system of class distinction very
frankly though Jimmy's cynicism. Throughout the play he harangues his
wife Alison continuously in horribly long, vicious, taunting speeches, for
her affluent middle class origin. He also ridicules Alison's father for
living in the 'past' . He describes her mother as the "bellow like a
rhinoceros in labour, " who protest of Alison's marriage with him and he
redicules Alison's mother as she thought of him to be a criminal just
because he was keeping long hair. Jimmy refers to Alisin's mother as on
'old bitch' and wishes here death. He keeps talking not only in a sarcastic
and condemnatory manner about Alison's parents but treats Alison herself
in a most offensive and insulting manner. In attempting to hurt his wife,
he violates every decency of love and of life, and he employs every
savagery of tone, and mood which he can command.
Jimmy also abused about Alison's mother that if she dies, ' the
worms in her grave will suffer from indigestion, and belly-ache after
eating her flesh.' However, he can't get a reaction from Alison and he
begins to make a fuss about it;
" I said she is an old bitch, and should be dead ! why
don't you leap to her defence ! (Look Back in Anger p.53)
39
Helena this time wants Jimmy to stop abusing Alison's mother, she
wants him to pull out from his anger but Alison resists her to do so as
Jimmy is so much habituated with his aggressive behaviour and rage,
Alison refered him that;
"Oh, don't try and take his suffering away from himhe'd be lost without it."
Alison's inertness and timidness really makes Jimmy mad, he gets

so angry that he pushes Cliff back savagely and keeps on shouting at
Alison. But the more Jimmy provokes, the more Alison withdraws.
Helena, Alison's friend who came as a sojourner to Jimmy's house,
is also criticized in a bitter tone. When Jimmy learns that she is coming to
stay with them, he regards her as one of his "natural enemies" and asks
his wife sarcastically:
"Did you tell her to bring her armor ? Because she is
going to need it!"
Helena is target of Jimmy's verbal assaults from the very

beginning. Jimmy finds faults with her for ironing clothes endlessly, for
being too noisy. Jimmy has the strong objection to Alison's going to the
church with Helena, shows his sarcastic attitude to both religion and
existing order of the church of that time. When Jimmy finds that Alison
has fallen under the influence of Helena, he addresses her as:
"You Judas ! you phlegm ! she's taking you with her,
and you're so bloody feeble, you'll let her do it !"
40
Throughout the play there is only one scene where Jimmy express
his physical aggression towards Alison by burning her arm with hot iron
and Jimmy tells her that he didn't mean to hurt her and then he apologizes
for doing it deliberately. Many times Jimmy verbally assaults Alison,
friends and whole society and only once time he physically attacks on
Alison deliberately but it is said that the psychological wounds are more
deeper than physical wounds and it can be healed within the period of
time but psychological wounds are more painful and can't be easily
healed which Alison suffers a lot, she is psychologically suffers a lot
through the taunts, bullies, tortures and humiliation of herself caused by
Jimmy.
Jimmy inflicts wounds on his wife continuously as he seeks more
from women than he could ever get from them and whenever he is
disappointed that transforms on them with savage resentment. Wellwarth
claims that "Jimmy's rantings are always the natural outgrowth of his
psychotic stage: they are a defense mechanism he uses to hurt his wife.
to avoid facing up the problem of his own helpless character" (119)
("John Osborne: ' Angery young man' ?
John Osborne (Look Back in Anger)
Jimmy frequently accuses Alison of being weak and frail. It can be
said that he projects the unacceptable aspects of his character on Alison.
He attacks on Alison's timidity and weakness. Jimmy makes use of one of
the ego defense mechanisms that he expresses anger and aggressive
behaviour in order to hide his vulnerability and dependency. Jimmy's
dependency on Alison can be seen when he tells Alison:
41
"There is hardly a moment when I'm not watching and

wanting you. I've got to hit out somehow. Nearly four years
of being in the same room with you, night and day, and I still
can't stop my sweet breaking out when I see you doingsomething as ordinary as leaning over an ironing board."
Jimmy watched his father's death when he was ten years old. He
has the feeling of losing someone. He thinks that Alison does not know
anything about loss or the feeling of helplessness. The incident of his
father dying has so much an effective on his mind that he described the
twelve months during which he sat besides his father and watching him
dying, but nobody gets concerned with his father. Alison and Helena are
busy going to church which makes Jimmy raged.
Jimmy wants to make feel Alison the feeling of losing someone.
Therefore, he tells her that she should have had a child and had lost it so
that she could have experienced the feeling of loss and be curses Alison.
Jimmy is wretch because Alison didn't remain present at funeral of
Hugh's mother and he is so much disgust that he considered Alison a
bitch. Jimmy doesn't seem to feel sorry for the baby. Instead, he tells her
that he is hurt since she has not even sent bunch of flowers to Hugh's
mother. He thinks that Alison was not so serious as she do not remains
present at funeral of Hugh's mother. This time Jimmy wants both lover
and mother at the same time. He, abusing Alison, says:
42
" I don't care. (beginning quietly) I don't care if she's

going to have a baby. I don't care if it has two heads ! "
"Jimmy's class hatred gradually turns into a kind of
sexual hatred as the play develops. Jimmy's insecurity is felt
as he tells Cliff about his sexual life with Alison"
" Do you know I have never known the great pleasure
of lovemaking when I didn't desire it myself she just
devours me whole every time she'll go on sleeping and
devouring until there is nothing left of me."
Between such abusing and torturing dialogues we have some light
comic scene with their bear and squirrel game can be considered as
Jimmy's oedipal need for Alison in addition to escape from the harsh
reality as Jimmy tells Alison:
"We'll be together in our bear's cave, and our
squirrel's drey, and we'll sing songs about overselvesabout warm trees and sung caves, and lying in the sun."
John Osborne's stage play Look Back in Anger has wonderfully
been transformed into movie, directed by Tony Richardson in 1956 and
the other one directed by David Jones in 1989. Both the movies have the
perfect visualization of the original book. Look Back in Anger. Both the
movies are smoothly going as we visualize the book. Both the movies are
43
at some level appeared boring to us as they have same static background

and continuous dialogues of aggressive behaviour but the music and
dancing of the play gives us some light mood.
Our protagonist Jimmy Porter becomes angry because of many
reasons as we can see in the play, inspite of his graduation he runs small
sweet-stall, he hates the entire British class system, he wants enthusiasm
from his wife Alison, and Cliff, he hates his monotonous life, he also
wretched with religious and economical issues, of his time.
These can be considered as major reasons for Jimmy's angry
behaviour which draw the theme of anger throughout the play.
Eventually, it may be stated that Jimmy expresses anger and
aggressive behaviour due to several reasons and he directly expresses his
feeling of anger both verbally and physically by assaulting Alison, where
as Alison either suppresses her anger or aggresses passively by giving no
reaction against her husband's aggressive attacks.
44
Chapter-IV
Elements of Anger in
Inadmissible Evidence
45
Chapter- IV
Elements of Anger in Inadmissible Evidence
This fourth chapter deals with different elements of anger in the
play Inadmissible Evidence, through the leading antihero Bill Maitland
who is slightly different from our previous antihero Jimmy porter who
verbally and physically attacks on his wife but Bill Maitland verbally
attacks to his clients, wife and daughter. He does not attacks physically
but passes lewd comments on women. The play deals with long absurd
monologues rather than active dialogues.
Inadmissible Evidence is the most personal play of John Osborne,
as biographer John Heilpern has written, "Inadmissible Evidence became
an extraordinary act of preophecy for John Osborne." Like Bill, couple of
years after the play was first produced, Osborne himself cracked up and
ended up in hospital with a nervous breakdown.
Bill Maitland is a bottled expression of the playwright's own
emotional state. The anger remains, but unlike Porter's, it is turned
inwards in self-loathing. Maitland recognizes that he is the root cause of
his own problems, but can't get a decent foothold on life to turn things
around.
This play centres around solicitor Bill Maitland, a man who stacks
up mistresses by the dozen, has a bad word to say around most people he
meets and who hates his business and employees. He is obessed with
recalling every woman he is ever know. Throughout, he forces his
assistant to listen to him. Observe him juggling with his wife, longtime
girlfriend, daughter and casual encounters, only to suddenly become a
46
professional when a client walks in. At some point the reader becomes
aware that while Bill claims to have no respect for most people, he
desperately tries to keep them from leaving him.
The play shows the mental distintegration of the middle-aged
Maitland during two days of personal and professional hell. It starts with
a nightmare as he dreams that he has been arraigned in court for, " having
unlawfully and wickedly published a wicked, bawdy and scandalous
object intending to vitiate and corrupt the morals of the subjects of lady
the Queen." This object turns out to be himself. And the play then shows
how he increasingly isolated from Hudson and Jones, his work
colleagues, from Joy his secretary, from his clients, from his wife, from
his lover and, so painfully, from his daughter. Bill throughout the play
loves women but treat them badly.
We can see that Jimmy porter displaces his anger on Alison Porter
his wife, who always remains silent and never rebels to him but here
Anna Maitland would not remain silent, she may verbally attack on Bill
displaces his frustration on his employees, colleagues and mistresses. So
a crumbling solicitor, Bill Maitland, losing his staff, his mistress.
It is clearly, seen that Jimmy Porter and Bill Maitland's reason for
their anger is different in the sense that Jimmy is loved and cared by
Alison, Helena and Cliff despite his aggressiveness; however, Bill's main
reason for his anger is the fact that his existence is ignored by his parents,
his wife, his daughter, his friends and his associates as the play develops.
47
The play opens with dream sequence in which Bill is interrogated

by judge inorder to make certain decision but Bill makes complex
statement that;
"But I'm incapable of making decisions."
(Inadmissible Evidence p.6) He frequently assaults people working
at his office. he taunts his secretary Shirley due to the fact that she is not
fond of putting on make-up:
"Of course, I forgot you girls don't really were makeup nowadays, do you? All leaking eyewshadow and red
noses. Go and put, on some lipstick, dear. What's the
matter ? Isn't he giving to you ? "
he also despises Shirley's boyfriend by calling him "dropy young
book-keeper" (Inadmissible Evidence p.18)
Bill's mental condition proves as he is desperate by his act of
demanding his headache pills. He always keeps his pills in his ticket
pocket or drawers at his office. He kept the pills with him as if he himself
creates such situation of headache by his aggressive behaviour. He is
mentally disturbed and gets rage on his colleagues.
While conversing with Hudson, Bill himself confesses that he has
tried many times not to pain others, he would be better with others but he
thinks that he would not be functioning properly as the things itself got
mashup by him. He considered his mind as a very small, sluggish and
slow moving brain as it perceives little and it retains nothing.
48
Bill's secretary Shirley wants to take leave for a weak as she was
pregnant and wants to get marry but Bill wants her to stay with him not
going to anybody as she is his property and Shirley accuses on him as he
is bribing her, to stay with him. Shirley is pregnant because of the sexual
relationship between them. But Bill is such on irresponsible person who
pretends that he has not touched her and argues;
" I haven't touched you. You're accusing me. But I
haven't touched you. Not for three months. At least."
On return Shirley gets angry and reminds him of their matings
about physical relationship that:
"One weekend in Leicester
... three times on this floor."
and then she inform Bill not to push Joy's work on her. This shows
that Bill is irresponsible about his duties and he ill-treats the women
which results his isolation and loneliness within his own life.
Bill Maitland immediately mixes his professional and personal life
while dealing with his clients. His mind is so flexible that at one point we
can see he is raged because of loosing Mrs.Garnsey and at the other
second he asks Jones about his marriage plan as he asks, "When are you
getting married ? " (Inadmissible Evidence p.74) Jones replies uncertainty
about it and Bill again starts reading a divorce petition and indulge in
professional view.
49
Bill Maitland feels close to Hudson, his managing clerk at office

but Bill does not seem to care about him. Bill verbally dominate to
Hudson as Hudson tries to say something important. Bill interrupts and
does not let him finish his sentence. He also criticizes Hudson for being
too "absorbed in his children" (Inadmissible Evidence p.38)
Bill's criticism towards Hudson might be because of the fact that
Hudson is standing as a foil to Bill since he has everything that Bill longs
for. He has happy family with a loving wife and children and he is offered
a better position from rival law firm with a good salary since he is good at
his job. It is also noticeable that he is loved by everyone both at Bill's
office and at the other firms. And he gets on very well with Bill's wife,
Anna, as Bill says:
"Perhaps she should have married you. You have so
many points of agreement." (Inadmissible Evidence p.38)
This shows to some extent Bill feels jealous about Hudson's nature
as he can adjust himself with other people and situation verywell. Bill's
statement proves that he has not so much agreement with his wife Anna
which creates separation between them.
We can see Bill Maitland's snobbish attitude at the office which can
be defined as a defense mechnishm that Bill uses in order to cover up his
inferiority complex just as in the case of Jimmy's assaults on Alison. This
time Bill displaces the anger he feels for his wife, Anna's upper-middle
class manners and friends, towards the people working at his office. Bill
is not strong enough to express anger towards Anna Since she is not the
type of woman like Alison who would remain silent but Anna would
50
attack verbally on Bill. Therefore, Bill as we can see he is socially

superior to his workers he prefers to assault them.
Bill thinks that he is worthless in the eyes of both Anna and her
friends because he is from the lower-middle class and Bill's inferiority
complex stems from the above fact. He feels that they put up with him
just because of Anna's social status as he tells Liz:
" They all seem to adore her but more than ever
it's only all right when I'm with her It was strange, as if I
were there on tolerance they're sorry for Anna and think
I'm a boorish old ram "
Bill is having no respect and care for his wife Anna but he also
feels worthless and dependent on her as he says:
"[] the more they despise me the more admirable
and courgageous and decent spirited you become
sometimes I think you're my only grip left, if you let me go,
I'll disappear, I'll be made to disappear, nothing will work,
I'll be something in a capsule in space, weightless, unable to
touch anything or do anything, like a groping baby in a
removed putrefying womb" (Inadmissible Evidence p.60)
Besides Shirley and Hudson, Bill also assaults his young clerk,
Jones. According to Bill, Jones is "useless" (Inadmissible Evidence p.61)
It is clearly seen that he does not like him at all as he says:
51
"He's a tent peg. Made in England. To be knocked into

the ground He irritates me. He doesn't like me any more
than I like him."
(Inadmissible Evidence pp. 21-22)
The stage directions in the play also say that Bill's manner to Jones
is "Slightly hostile." (Inadmissible Evidence p.17) In fact, it seems that
there is no particular reason for Bill to hate Jones except for the fact that
he is representative of young generation.
Bill also not behave well with his daughter as he thinks that Jane
does not care about him and would not mind his not attending her
eighteenth birthday party as he tells. Hudson;
"It can't be the greatest disappointment of her life I
know, and she knows."
He considered himself "a fairly rotten father but better than some."
(Inadmissible Evidence p.61) and he accuses Jane of being cold and
indifferent towards him. Bill even not care and concern about his own
daughter when he is busy with Maples, Jane is being ordered to wait
outside Bill ordered to Joy;
"Tell her she's got to wait. I don't care. She's got to
wait. Now tell her."
And Bill gets busy again with Maples. He ignores his daughter
Jane, and not willing to attend her birthday party rather than he is willing
to go with Liz to spend weekend.
It can be claimed that Bill has intra-individual and inter-personal
conflicts. He feels worthless but he tries to look like an elegant person. he
52
is aware of the fact that he is being alienated but he does not try to change
the situation. He can not get along well with anyone around him due to
his assaults. Therefore, people begin to abandon him one by one.
However, all he wishes for is love, safety and friendship. But he just
wants things to happen without any effort. He wants to secure the future
of his wife and daughter but without any effort. He tries to escape from
his problems by the help of several women but as he tells Hudson it does
not work:
" I want to feel tender, I want to be comforting and
encouraging and full of fun and future things and things like
that. But all I feel is as if my head were bigger and bigger,
spiked and falling off, like a mace, it gets in my way, or
keeps getting too close."
After making such a show of being elegant person, Bill realizes

that he can't solve anything in his life. He tries to repress his problems.
However, the more he represses the more he becomes exhausted;
" I keep wanting to sleep I couldn't get up (this
morning). I couldn't even move at first."
It is Bill's repressed aggression which leads him to the verbally
assaults to the people around him.
At the end, Bill pours out all his frustration and angry feedings at
his daughter. The critics claims that it is the most significant scene of the
play because Bill expresses all his inner rage that he has been trying to
53
repress so far. He bullies, insults, taunts and yells at his daughter who
remains silent against his verbal attacks. According to Hawkins-Day
"Maitland's assault reveals as much his weakness as his aggression, his
daughter's silence as much her quiet confidence as her passiveness"
("Form out the shadow of Nicol Williamson." John Osborne: A
Casebook.)
Bill's aggressive behaviour towards Jane is defense mechanism in
the sense that he expresses anger in order to cover his weakness and
vulnerability. He tells Jane that he is not taken into consideration either
by his own family or by his wife's parents as be says:
" [] they never mention me by name, love to Bill,
how's Bill, nothing, not for ten years, and they only did it in
the early years after you were born because they thought
they had to if they were going to be able to see you ! "
Bill without any hesitation denies to his daughter that he is not
going to attend her birthday party and mentions her reasons that he is
going to be with Liz, his mistress. And he gives reason why he does not
want to come to the party.
"[] I know that when I see you, I cause you little
else but distaste, or distress, or at least, your own vintage,
swingeing indifference. But nothing, certainly not your
swingeing distaste can match what I feel for you. "
54
Bill's dislike of his daughter turns into a youth envy as he goes on

talking:
" You've no shame of what you are They're young, I
said, and for the first time they're being allowed to roll about
in it and have clothes and money and music and sex, and
you can take or leave any of it."
He tells his daughter that he was not given the chance of such
independence when he was at her age. He himself like Jimmy does not
know or feel what it is like to young and Bill keep the generation gap and
ignores, insults her. Bill gets angry at his daughter because of the fact that
she is not aware of the opportunities that are presented to her and her
generation on the whole.
Consequently, when compared to Jimmy, Bill is not as aggressive
as Jimmy because be does not express anger as much as Jimmy does
although both have inner rage. Bill, like Jimmy, is angry at himself
because although he is aware of his impotency, isolation and alienation,
he can not do anything about it. And he also aware of the fact that he
himself creates his own isolation by treating people badly. Bill is not
trying to solve his problems but he redirects his inner anger towards his
own associates and daughter, represses his inner conflicts, he tries to
escape from his problems by having excessive sexual intercourses or by
totally denying the fact that he is wrong. He says:
55
" [] I myself, am more packed with spite and

twitching with revenge than anyone I know of. I actually
often, frequently, daily want to see people die for their
errors. I wish to kill them myself, to throw the switch with
my own first. Fortunately, I've had no more opportunities
than most men. Still, I've made more than the best of them."
At the end of the play, we can define that none of these defense
mechanisms work out and he regresses and lases his contact with the real
world. He himself gets confuse that he is living real life or dreaming. He
realizes that he has alienated every person in his life. His secretary, his
managing clerk, his telephonist, his daughter and his mistress abandon
Bill. At last, he cuts his contact with his wife by telling her on the phone.
" I think, it must be better if you don't see me
don't see me yes don't I'll have to put the receiver
down Goodbye."
(Inadmissible Evidence
p.112)
Bill himself starts conversation through phone and at the end he
himself cuts the relation through phone. The phone electronic device
which connects the people but here the same device separates Bill from
every relations in his life.
John Russell Brown suggests that "Osborne is no longer angry and
defiant; he is asking for compassion and understanding." (Modern British
Dramatists p.10) In the beginning of the play we can observe that Bill's
main concern is searching for love and friendship as he longs but remains
56
failure. However as the play develops he realizes that he will not be able
to get them and gradually he gives up because he does not have the
enthusiasm or energy that Jimmy Porter has. One (critic Simon Trussler
suggests that Bill is not looking back in anger like Jimmy is; instead, "he
is looking back in nostalgia just as he seeking in the future a security he
now know it can not contain." (The Plays of John Osborne p.133)
Bill does not feel safe about the future and he has doubts about his
daughter's future too as he asks her:
" [] How much do think your safety depends on the
goodwill of others ? Well ? Tell me. or your safety ? How
safe do you think you are ? How safe ?"
In play we find more long absurd monologues rather than
dialogues. Bill wants confort not in a real visible manner but he wants it
through the invisible persons while talking with them on phone. He is
more electronic connections than real emotional connections with his
associated and people. If we want to sustain a healthy relation with our
family and friends or whatever our souranding people, we need to do an
active effort with kind of emotional behaviour but Bill fails here in
behaving in an appropriate manner. His effortless action
to keep
relationship with others makes him alienated and isolated.

Inadmissible Evidence can be considered as an 'evidence' of
Osborne's changing attitude towards life. His emphasis on anger,
enthusiasm and energy of Look Back in Anger begins to turn into looking
for love, friendship and safety. Jimmy Porter had a hope and enthusiasm
57
to change things or to start over again. However, Bill Maitland has none
of them and he begins to question his safety.
58
Chapter V
Conclusion
59
CHAPTER V
Conclusion
This research has been aimed at analyzing Osborne's underlying
theme of anger in his selected plays namely Look Back in Anger (1956)
and Inadmissible Evidence (1964). Anger can be considered in two ways
that there are two main aspects of anger which are the emotional state of
anger and the expression of that emotion. Osborne represented the
different elements of anger through Jimmy and Bill. They expressed their
emotion of anger through different ways.
Berkowitz's reformulated version of the frustration-aggression
hypothesis helps me in order to explain anger as an emotional state of
mind. It is useful to understand psychological aspects of Jimmy Porter
and Bill Maitland. Leonard Berkowitz defined that anger as an emotional
state of mind experienced when a desired goal is blocked, that is, anger is
an emotion that is felt when a person is frustrated. According to
frustration- aggression theory people feel angry because of the fact that
they are frustrated on account of several reasons. The research has looked
into the reasons why Osborne's protagonists feel angry, in particular the
factors that lead them to frustration.
Jimmy Porter, the protagonist of Look Back in Anger , is frustracted
and angry because of the passivity and insensibility of the people when
he loves. Our another protagonist of Inadmissible Evidence, Bill Maitland
is frustrated because he is angry at himself since he realizes the fact that
the himself is the isolated and alienated.
60
The expression of anger has been analysed in the terms of Freud's

psychoanalytic theory of defense mechanisms regarding the fact that
people express anger or aggressive behaviour for the purpose of selfpreservation. The characters of the plays used in order to express their
anger such as open aggression, passive aggression. For instance, Jimmy
and Bill aggress verbally when they feel frustrated and angry. Having
defined anger as an emotional status of mind, that is aggression, it can be
claimed that the character of Osborne become angry and aggressive when
they feel that they are frustrated, vulnerable and helpless. Therefore, they
express their anger either verbally, physically or passively in order to get
rid of their angry feelings so that they can prevent self-destruction.
Look Back in Anger (1956), Inadmissible Evidence (1964) have
been selected for this research due to the fact that each play represents a
period in Osborne's career as a playwright. Look Back in Anger,
considered as the autobiographical play of him and stands as an example
for the early period of Osborne. Inadmissible Evidence in the most
personal of him, displays the fact that Osborne's understanding of life is
beginning to change.
Look Back in Anger displays the energy, enthusiasm and anger of
Jimmy Porter and it was regarded as a reaction against the insensibility of
the generation which had grown up during world war II. Jimmy Porter, "
the first young voice to cry for a new generation that had forgotten the
war, mistrusted the welfare state and mocked its established rules with
boredom, anger and disgust" credited by John Mortimer, (" The Angry
young man stayed that way" John Osborne: A Casebook)
61
Osborne was optimistic about the future when he wrote Look Back
in Anger. Jimmy's angry feelings were the source of his energy and
enthusiasm to awake people around him and his generation as a whole.
With Inadmissible Evidence it is seen that Osborne's view of life and
future is beginning to change. Inadmissible Evidence suggests that
Osborne has begun to question the safety of the future because of the fact
that he is losing his hopes about the coming times. More than anger,
Osborne stresses the significance of love and friendship in this play.
Because John Osborne displays Bill's situation as helpless person who is
deprived f love and friendship.
In both of Osborne's plays characters talk nostalgically about the
old, happy days of England because they think that those days are gone
and will not come back again. From the beginning of his career Osborne
tries to show that those happy days are left in the past. That is why Jimmy
gets angry when he looks
back. Jimmy is not optimistic about the
coming days of England anymore. John Osborne expresses that the anger
turns into grievance due to the fact that he and his generation have lost
the old happy days of England.
The concluding remarks leads us towards the fact that nothing
remains the same in life, change is necessary as it is a rule of nature. Both
the protagonists Jimmy Porter and Bill Maitland wanted change in their
life, they lament over their present situation. They constantly lives life in
past about what London before world war II. They grieve over the change
in politics, society, religion, economic etc. They were just like in need of
old days which were passed and never returns.
62
These longing leads them to frustration in their life which turns

into angry feeling and both became aggressive in their nature. Jimmy and
Bill both become aggressive because of their different personal reasons.
Jimmy being graduated runs a small sweet stall, he needs the appropriate
job of his qualification which he doesn't get and hurts him a lot. He needs
both lover's attention and mother's affection at same time and doesn't get
it which makes him raged. Jimmy Porter dissatisfied with his present
economic condition, he hates the religious norms of his time. Jimmy
verbally and physically assaults to Alison as he remains silent like passive
wife shows passive-aggression towards her husband. Jimmy dominates
his friend Cliff, Helena and wife Alison through his aggressive behaviour.
There were several reasons for Jimmy being angry, one of the major
reason for his anger is, he needs better economic status and full of
enthusiasm in his wife Alison which she lacks. He feels bored by his life
of reading newspaper at every Sunday and critics the British institution.
He feels his life is caged within small sweet stall and one room flat in
large midland town.
Bill is different kind of person from Jimmy as Bill needs love,
affection and friendship. He has wife Anna, daughter Jane and good
colleagues staff still he gets angry over them. He feels being isolated as
nobody cares for him but his verbal aggressive reaction towards his
associates makes him estranged from others. He passed lewd comments
on his female colleagues which shows how he is careless in respecting
women. He wants to secure future but he doesn't do anything for that and
his effortless act of securing future goes in vain. Bill wants to solve his
problems through excessive sexual demands on women different women
63
in his contacts. He ill-treats his mistresses and gets angry on them also.
He gets angry on matter that he is not right kind of person as solicitor for
dealing with cases. His managing clerk Hudson, who also thinks about
joining another firm, which makes Bill to feel alone as he is very close to
him. He himself being isolated through his wife also in frustration, he
cuts her phone at end of the play.
Both the protagonists getting raged in their situation, it happens
some times through rebellious behaviour one can get change in situation
or life but it remains fail in case of Jimmy Porter and Bill Maitland. Both
remained fail in longing for change, enthusiasm, love, friendship and
care. Both of them wanted to defense the situation through their anger
but non of any defense-mechanisms useful to them.
As a result of research, in analyzing the reasons for the frustration
and angry feelings of the protagonists of Osborne's earlier and later plays
and the ways in which the characters represent their rage on other people,
it is concluded that the rage and angry feelings which Osborne stresses in
his earlier plays runs into fear and grievance in his later plays. The
character of his earlier play, Look Back in Anger's Jimmy express
aggressive behaviour due to his anger and rage, however, the protagonist
of his later play, Inadmissible Evidence's Bill Maitland behave
aggressively mainly on account of his fear and impotency in changing
things for the better future.
64
Bibliography
65
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Osborne, John
Personal Enemy
Anthony Creighton, 1955
_________ ,
Look Back in Anger
Faber and Faber; London : 1957
__________,
The Entertainer
Faber and Faber; London : 1957
___________,
Epitaph For George Dillon
Faber and Faber; London: 1958
___________,
The World of Paul Slickey
___________,
A Subject of Scandal and Concern
___________,
Luther
66
___________,
Under Plain Cover
___________,
The Blood of the Bambergs
__________,
Tom Jones : A Film Script
Grove Press, 1964
___________,
Inadmissible Evidence
___________,
A Bond Honoured
___________,
a Patriot for Me
___________,
The Hotel in Amsterdam
___________,
Time Present
67
___________,
Very Like a Whale
___________,
West of Suez
___________,
Hedda Gabler
___________,
A Sense of Detachment
___________,
Jill and Jack
___________,
The End of Me Old Cigar
___________,
Watch it Come Down
___________,
Try a Little Tenderness
68
___________,
You're Not Watching Me, Mummy
___________,
Dejavu
___________,
A Better Class of Person: An Autobiography: 1929-1956
___________,
Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography: 1955-1966
___________,
Damn You, England: Collected Prose
69
Secondary Sources
Book referred :
Berkowitz.L
Aggression: a Social Psychological analysis
MacGraw-Hill; Michigan, 1962
____________,
Frustration Aggression Hypothesis:
Examination and Reformulation
Psychological Bulletin (vol-106)
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989
Brill, A.A.
Basic Principles of Psychoanalysis,
University Press of America, New York, 1985
Brown, John Russell (Ed.)

Introduction: Modern British Dramatists
Prentice- Hall Inc; New Jersey, 1968
Dollard, J.et al.

Frustration and aggression
CT; Yale University Press; New Haven, 1939
70
Gilleman, Luc M.
"The Logic of Anger and Despair"
John Osborne: A Casebook
(Ed.) Patricia D. Denison
Garland; New York, 1997
Hawking Dady, Mark

"From out of the Shadow of Nicol-Willamson."
Johan Osborne : A casebook
Homer
Iliad
Tr.M.J.Gakley and S.O. Andrew
The Aldine Press; Letchworth, Herts, 1955
Kazdin, E.Alan
Encyclopedia of Psychology: vol.8
Oxford University Press; USA, 2000
Lall, Ramji (Ed.)

Look Back in Anger : A critical Study
Rama Brothers, New Delhi : 1999
71
Mortimer, John
"The Angry Young Man Stayed that Way"
John Osborne : A Casebook
Rummel, R.J.
Understanding Conflict and War:
The Confict Helix Vol.2
Sage Publication; Michigan, 1976
____________,
The Dynamic Psychological Field vol.1
Sage Publication; California, 1975
Sinha, Prashant K. and Ezekiel, Nissim (Ed.)

Look Back in Anger
Anand sons; New Delhi, 1992
Trussler, Simon
The Plays of John Osborne
Vicrot Gollancz Ltd; London, 1969
Wellwarth, George
"Jihn Osborne: Angry Yong Man ? "
Johan Osborne Look Back in Anger
(Ed.) John Ressell Taylor
Macmillan; London, 1968
72
Movies Referred :
Look Back in Anger
Dir. Tony Richardson, Prof. Richard Burton,
Claire Bloom, and Mary Ure.
The Samuel Goldway Company, 1959
Look Back in Anger

Dir, David Jones, Kenneth Branagh,
Emma Thompson, 1989
Websites referred :
www.banglajol.info
www.councelling-directory.org.uk
www.creducation.org.
www.Gliffy.com
www.Gradesave.com
www.Life-wth-confidence.com
www.rosariomariocapalbo.wordpress.com
www.theatrestrust.org.uk
www.the-criterion.com
www.the guardian.com
73

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ANGER AS A MAJOR

my disease, an invitation to my sick room," and described her as

After school, Osborne went home to his mother in London and

One of the main reasons for Osborne's having a different place in

(Look Back in Anger p.01)

Luther (1961), the most impressive of his plays of this phase,

This play is conventional realistic play, it is set in a suite in a large

author's works, he now switched almost entirely to TV plays and

" I am governed by fear every day of my

We can define the dictionary meaning anger is "a violent,

reasons for the protagonists rage, considering anger as an emotional state

(Cantherine Pratt : www.life-with-confidence.com)

Anger is a motivating force

Anger can benefit relationships

Anger Provides self-insight

These are the ways which positively proves helpful to person to

(Men for change, The online Healthy Relationship Project, 1998)

Cliff : She's burnt her arm on the iron.

(Look Back in Anger pp.21-22)

Frustration is defined as a state that sets in if a goal oriented act is

Aggressive behaviour requires the existence of frustration and,

The existence of frustration leads to some kind of aggressive

Identity requires opposition, which is manifested through aggression. For

(Look Back in Anger p.21)

There are several categories of aggression and violence including,

Because of timidness of Alison, Lack of enthusiasm in Jimmy's

(Look Back in Anger pp.8-9)

(Look Back in Anger p.89)

Jimmy is so much displeased with his static situation, his inner

truth of it well, I do drink

(Inadmissible Evidence p-9)

Bill's addiction to alcohol can also be considered as a way to

(Inadmissible Evidence p.23)

It can be claimed that Maitland is aware of his troubles, however

As it has been foreshadowed in his dream trail Bill has dependency

(Inadmissible Evidence pp.98-99)

Bill Maitland is frustrated and angry mainly because although he

Jimmy remains stict to his position of running sweetstall as he thought

the social order but the desire to possess a woman's complete,

Jimmy is finished his reading of news paper and waiting for

(Look Back in Anger p.8)

The absence of human feelings of love, fellow-feeling, tolerance of

phlegmatic and Pusillanimous." (Look Back in Anger p.16)

" I pretended not to be listening And- of course- he

(Look Back in Anger p.24)

(Look Back in Anger p.54)

Alison's inertness and timidness really makes Jimmy mad, he gets

(Look Back in Anger p.36)

Helena is target of Jimmy's verbal assaults from the very

"There is hardly a moment when I'm not watching and

" I don't care. (beginning quietly) I don't care if she's

at some level appeared boring to us as they have same static background

The play opens with dream sequence in which Bill is interrogated

Bill Maitland feels close to Hudson, his managing clerk at office

attack verbally on Bill. Therefore, Bill as we can see he is socially

"He's a tent peg. Made in England. To be knocked into

(Inadmissible Evidence pp. 21-22)

(Inadmissible Evidence p.39)