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JOHN OSBORNE (1929-1994) - Coggle Diagram
JOHN OSBORNE (1929-1994)
LIFE
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he started working as an actor and assistant stage manager, then started to write his own plays
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Look back in anger
PLOT AND SETTING
The play takes place in a working-class environment, particularly in an attic flat in the Midlands
Jimmy Porter is the representative of the frustrated British youth of the 1950s. He is a disillusioned graduate who makes his living by running a stall in a market with his friend Cliff.
He is married with Alison, the daughter of a retired colonel on whom he his violent and futile complaints, manifesting his inability to show tenderness. His wife is pregnant but she fears his rage and doesn't tell it to him. In the second act, influenced by her friend Elena, she leaves him.
In the last act, she returns home after the loss of the baby and finds Jim ready to play with her in a fantasy world of teddy bears and squirrels. The play is circular because the objective reality is the same as in the beginning.
CHARACTERS
JIMMY
angry with
the past, his father's premature death
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an anti-hero, he speaks but he never acts
ALISON
upper middle class, she is the victim but also by her own choice
ELENA
honest and straightforward, she believes in the distinction between right and wrong
CLIFF
working-class uneducated man, a pleasant person
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STRUCTURE
circular plot (it begins and ends in the same room and always on Sunday), the characters do the same actions in the 1st and 3rd act
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spontaneous and vital language, but also provocative, with slang expressions and colloquialism