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A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ‘ANGER’ IMAGE IN LOOK BACK IN ANGER 

 

Günay ALLAHVERDİYEVA 

Qafqaz University 

[e-mail] 

 

Look Back in Anger is considered to be one of the most significant plays in the modern British theater. It was the first 

well-known play of "Kitchen Sink drama," a style of theater that examined the emotion and drama under the surface of a 

common domestic life. Jimmy Porter, the play's protagonist, became the model for the "Angry Young Man," a name which 

was given to the whole generation of artists and working class of young men in post-World War II British society. 

John Osborne wrote Look Back in Anger in only a few weeks in May of 1955 and it was first rejected by many of the 

theater companies that Osborne approached about producing it. George Divine, the creative producer of Royal Court 

Theater, decided to gamble on the play and staged its first production. The play opened on May 8, 1956 at Royal Court 

Theater and then, it received a variety of reviews from British theater critics and won a review from the Times. Fortunately, 

this helped the play make an audience. 

Interestingly enough, Look Back in Anger emerged in a time of important alteration from Britain's Victorian past into 

the modern twentieth century. Jimmy's rage and anger are his expression of repressed emotion and his need for life in a 

world that has become indifferent and depressing. That anger became a symbol of the rebellion against the political and 

social depression of British culture and society. His anger is destructive to those around him and the psychological violence 

of the play received a great deal of criticism. Critics today agree, however, that the play is central to an understanding of 

British life in the twentieth century and, thus, an important piece of British literature. 

In this study, it is aimed to appreciate Look Back in Anger through stylistic approach. In general aspect, stylistics helps 

explore the relationship between the language and meaning. Besides, there are so many examples of prose and poetry 

appreciations studied through stylistic approach. More is the pity, not so much attention has been paid to the stylistic 

analysis of a dramatic text in the twentieth-century. Culperer, Short and Verdonk (1998) suggested one of the reason of it as 

“the spoken conversation has for many centuries been commonly seen as a debased and unstable form of language, and thus 

with all their affinities with speech, were liable to be undervalued.” 

Last of all, in this study which is based on a stylistic approach to Look Back in Anger by John Osborne, Leech and 

Short’s categories of stylistic approach will be employed and examined in the analysis of important dialogues of the ‘anger’ 

image. Furthermore, with the help of stylistic analysis of ‘anger’ image in the play, the general atmosphere and the effect of 

World War II on British culture and society are aimed to indicate especially via dialogues between characters. Last but not 

least, stylistic analysis of drama text asserts that linguistic description and critical interpretation are distinct and 

complementary ways of explaining a literary text. 

 

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