Post war plays

POST-WAR PLAYS

Two postwar plays are John Osborne's Look Back in Anger and The Birthday Party. Look Back in Anger is Osborne's most popular play which successfully captures the moods of despair and frustration of the postwar generation. The play is a perfect study of class conflict and the misrule in the name of governance which creates great frustration in Jimmy Porter, the vituperative anti-hero of the play. The action of the play is centred around Jimmy's relationship with the society, his relationship with his wife Alison and her friend Helena as well as his relationship with his friend Cliff. Jimmy's entire Sunday is spent in his tirades against the misrule and class division of the Tory government and the lack of true intelligence or true enthusiasm in a single human being all over Britain. Jimmy verses the absolute disillusionment of the post war generation an the all pervasive despair which is more comic than tragic. When Alison leaves Jimmy, Jimmy has no moral problem in taking her friend Helena to his bed because he does not believe in middle class morality. How ever when his dear friend Cliff too leaves him, he realizes that the vacuum of his life can only be filled up by his wife Alison with whom who tries again to resume his 'beer and squirrel game' in his his desperate attempt to find some positive significance.