The Character of Jimmy Porter

Jimmy Porter is the male protagonist in Osborne Kitchen Sink Drama Look Back in Anger(1956). He is the representative of the Angry Young Generation that the post-world –war-second socio –political ethos generated. Jimmy is strongly conscious of the present condition of human life- that human existence has been degenerated even far below the bovine standard. Other men and women, who, as it were, sleep in the den of ignorance, unconsciousness and lowliness, cannot realize it. Standing on the debris of utter damnation Jimmy continues trumpeting to wake up his generation to consciousness. Unfortunately, others, for whom”April is the cruelest month” are not conscious of the Status qua and what is more they are unwilling to be conscious.This accounts for why Jimmy unleashes vitriolic anger on the heads of those whom he confronts in due course of reading newspaper, taking tea, hearing the music of Vaughan Williams and playing on the trumpet. Besides his wife Alison Porter , his friend Cliff, Helena, his wife’s friend, his mother-in-law, Nigel, his brother-in –law, Colonel Redfern, his father- in-law-all are the scapegoats of his anger. Endowed with apocalyptic vision , Jimmy intends to burn the existing condition to ashes by the fire of his anger. Jimmy’s anger is, therefore, more redemptive.

One understands that Jimmy’s is a highly tragic predicament, for he is entrapped in the labyrinth of his own consciousness. He can neither come out of his consciousness , nor those , who live with him can enter into it.It is his consciousness that destroys him and, therefore, he has become destructive to others .His trumpeting suggests his endeavor to summon people for waking up and his cry for salvation. It is synonymous with Hallelujah. Thus, Jimmy’s ‘over consciousness’ is his hamartia, if he is analyzed as a tragic protagonist. This metaphysical consciousness , that alienates Jimmy from those who crowd in his surrounding world, turns him into an above- the –average character.  It makes him Prophet –like , for a prophet only properly realizes the damnation of an era and sets out to usher in a golden millennium.

To identify Jimmy with a prophet exclusively is to commit a great blunder, for he is not led by the prophetic motto, amo vincit omnia, meaning love conquers over the universe. In other words, though Jimmy has the palpable perception of the rottenness of the status qua, he does not know the means of heralding a golden millennium. Therefore , he is called a ‘frustrated messiah’.

John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger dramatizes ‘the panorama of futility’ that became contemporary history. Jimmy’s consciousness in the play serves as the presence of the blind prophet Tiresius in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. The play gives us a temperature of social protest and the weather is blisteringly hot.Jimmy, who embodies the Lutheran rebelliousness, is the fuming British malcontent. One knows that the post-fifties sociopolitical an economic ethos has given birth to Jimmy Porter who embodies the spirit of every young man of the time.He is a social rebel and an intellectual misfit.

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Look Back in Anger: Jimmy Porter-As a representative of Angry Young Man/ Title of the play

In the wake of the Second World War human life turned into a mere debris of the traditional values. The royal glory of the British nation had almost evaporated; degeneration came at all the levels- political, religious, moral, conjugal etc.-of life . Besides, the evils , say,class-distinction, middle-class morality, stark materialism , sexual violence etc. cropped up. The conscious and intellectual British people , who had the sound memory of the past glory and the awareness of the present damnation and yet had no power to do  something philanthropic, could not live as passive witness to the ‘panorama of futility’ or the wasteland to which their civilization was reduced, but started to vent vitriolic anger upon those they were related. This generation of perceptive men that included the young men , come to be identified as ‘Angry Young Man’. John Osborne , Kinsley Amiss, Nigel Dennis, and John Wain have created central characters who are generally anguished and angry.

Jimmy Porter , the protagonist of John Osborne’s archetypal play of the “ Angry Young Generation”, Look Back in Anger is the typical representative of Angry Young  Generation of the post Second World War period. An intellectual misfit, he is dissatisfied with the status qua and rebels against it. He debunks at the ruling Conservative Party through his criticism of his brother- in- law,Nigel Redfern, the budding Tory politician. In the play Jimmy’s above- the – average consciousness is used as the veritable screen through which float diverse images of futility, damnation, degeneration, darkness, slovenliness and barbarism. Jimmy constantly revolts against the lowliness and beastliness of human existence. Others do not feel so. They are ,as it were , confined in the narrow cocoon of peripheral consciousness. There lies a huge gulf between the consciousness of Jimmy and that of the average men and women .This accounts for why Jimmy is so angry at everybody.

Jimmy fervidly strikes at the upper class and condemns their ‘hostage’ , Alison particularly the smugness and ideal of the stiff upper life. He cannot forget the upper middle class origin of his wife and constantly rails at her , her friends and relatives as “ Dame Alison’s mob”. He banters Alison for her virginity before marriage and defies the conventional sexual code that heralds the death of the middle class- morality. Alison fails to give him the perfect solidarity, the working class traits. Jimmy cannot trust women and therefore, Alison and Helena are seen wearing Jimmy’s shirt thus partly got transvestite. The women also symbolize the status qua , the boredom Jimmy hankers to come out from.

As representative angry young man, Jimmy voices his invective against the existing irritation torpor. He wants to hear just a warm thrilling voice that cries out “ Hallelujah”. Everybody including his wife wants peace, which is nothing more than a deathly coma or narcosis. We cannot fail to recognize Jimmy when he utters that he is one to whom the miseries of the world are his misery. Imaginative suffering is a profoundly solitary experience.

Psychologically considered Jimmy is not the epitome of the Angry Young Men of his generation. He is rather like Hamlet, an exceptional individual, a tortured soul who finds the ‘ time’s out of joint’ but has not the capability to usher in a golden millennium.

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