Chapter 31 Review of "Angrily Looking Back"

In 1958, the spring in Europe came very late, and May still felt a bit chilly.In an old London hotel, on the same "cold spring night, full of clouds and shadows" as in the first act of "Looking Back with Anger", I opened John Osborne's "Angerly Looking Back". Looking back", unknowingly saw the middle of the night. After reading it, I closed the book, stood up and stretched for a long time, but I still couldn't get rid of the depression in my heart!It turned out that this script was not what I expected: a lively young man, facing the enemy, clenched his fists, with awe-inspiring and angry light in his eyes, but a weak and pale child, lying on the hospital bed, screaming. The hoarse cry of venting anger!

The plot is as follows: the protagonist Jimmy Porter is a young man of about twenty-five years old, born in poverty, and has studied in college for several years. ’, and ended up with a farmer friend, Cliff, who set up a candy stand.His wife, Allison, was the daughter of an army colonel who had returned from India.She betrayed her family and married Jimmy in the church.These three young people of about the same age lived together on the top floor of the first floor, living a life of poverty, boredom, irritability and contradictions.Later, one of Alison's girlfriends, Helena, who was born in the middle class and was very devout, came to their house as a guest. She couldn't see the "torture" of Jimmy and Alison, so she sent a telegram to ask Alison's father to come and pick her up. , but Helena stayed and became Jimmy's mistress.In the end, the baby Alison was carrying died, and she returned to visit in grief.Feeling that her behavior was "immoral," Helena leaves Jimmy.So Jimmy and Allison went back to their old "poor animal lives."

After the play was staged, it became a sensation and became "a bomb on the London stage in 1956".Whether performing in London, Paris, Copenhagen, Oslo, Berlin, New York, etc., the venues are always sold out.The critics debated this play fiercely, but everyone had to admit: "It revealed the real situation of young people after the war." From Jimmy's mouth, the author said: "One day, when I'm no longer living with a candy stand, I may write a book about us...in a mile-high flame. This remembrance comes out of fire, out of blood Yes, my blood." It is not without reason that this script has caused some critics to "rage".Through Jimmy's laughing and cursing, the author vividly depicts the annoyance and sorrow of the declining colonialists of the old empire and the hypocritical bourgeoisie.They have endless emotions and nostalgia for the gradual collapse of the empire and the gradual reduction of the colonies; they feel helplessly unwilling to be enslaved by the United States; they feel nameless tension and fear about the use of nuclear weapons in future wars... These psychology, all written incisively and vividly.For example, Jimmy believes that his colonel's father-in-law is:

"Poor old Pa—he's just an old tree left over from an Edwardian moor, and it can't understand why the sun doesn't shine any more." And from the colonel's own mouth: "...Maybe Jimmy is right...I left England in May, 1914...I didn't see much of my own country until 1947. Well, of course I know things are changing I am. People are always telling me that the country is going downhill... But over there, it doesn't seem true to me. The England I remember is the England I left in 1914, and I Willing to remember it like this forever. Also, I led the armies of the Empire - this is my world, I love it, I love everything about it. At the time, it seemed like everything would go on forever. Looking back now, It was like a dream. It would be nice if it could go on forever. Those long cool nights in the mountains, everything was purple and gold. How happy your mother and I were. As if all I could ever wish for Satisfied. I think the last day the sun came, when that dirty little train puffed out of the crowded Indian station, and the marching band blared. I knew in my heart that it was all over. —everything is over."

Look at how Jimmy taunts Helena: "...I know Helena and her gang well. Actually, they're all over the place, you can't move. They're a romantic bunch. They spend most of their time looking back. .The only place of light they can see is the Dark Ages." There are many places in this play that mock American culture. For example, a professor at Yale University in the United States believed that Shakespeare turned into a woman when he wrote the play "The Tempest".But the saddest is: "...but I'd say it's miserable living in the American age—unless, of course, you're an American. Maybe our kids are going to be American. It's a thought, isn't it? (He kicks the gram Liv kicks and yells) I say it's a thought!"

Jimmy had this to say about aggressive wars and nuclear weapons: "...I envision men of our time who can no longer die for a great purpose. When we were little children, in the thirties and forties, it was done for us by others. There is no good and brave purpose left. If that bang did come and we were all blown away, it would add no luster to the pattern of old decency. It was nothing more than A brave new 'nothing, thank you' little accident, like running to the front of a bus, dying so senselessly and dishonorably..." What suffocates me in this script is the gray outlook on life of the "post-war British youth", a breath of depression, sorrow, terror and despair!Jimmy cried and said:

"Oh, my God, how I longed for some ordinary human passion, just passion, that's all, I want to hear a passionate voice call out Alleluia! (He beats his chest playfully) Alleluia , I'm alive! I have an idea, why don't we play a little game? Let's pretend we're all human, we're all really alive, if only for a while..." "...no one with ideas, no one with things, no faith, no confidence, no enthusiasm—just another Sunday night." From Alison's conversation with Cliff, it is also said: "...I always look back, to the end of my memory, and I can't remember what it was like to be young, what it was like to be really young. Jimmy said the same thing to me that day..."

And so, on the dull, dreary, mournful "Another Sunday Night," gray Jimmy spouted his feeble fists at his beloved wife and faithful companion!He takes Alison as a "hostage" he has taken from the middle class, and berates her about this "overfed" and "too privileged" family and class. He calls Alisson cowardly, obsequious, cruel, stupid... All this makes Alison complain to her father: "... Yes, some people get married out of revenge. At least, people like Jimmy..." Jimmy's nameless fire has its background.His father was a soldier who had returned from an injury in the Spanish battlefield, and died of humiliation and neglect.Jimmy said angrily:

"For twelve months I watched my father die--I was only ten years old. He came back from the Spanish field, you know. A bunch of god-fearing gentlemen over there got him Bruised and bruised. He doesn't have much time to live. Everyone knows--even me...but I'm the only one who cares about him...The family is ashamed of it--ashamed and pissed (looking out the window). As for mine As for the mother, she only thinks that she has become the same as a person who is doing nothing wrong. My mother is in favor of a few people, but these few people must be beautiful and fashionable people! . . I had to fight back my tears when I listened to him or read to him. At the end of twelve months, I too was a war veteran. . . . You see, at a very young age I Knowing what anger is - anger and powerlessness. I'll never forget this..."

Thus, Jimmy perpetually sympathizes with the working class, sympathizes with people who "do nothing right" and denounces the fashionable and beautiful upper class.He felt infinitely saddened by the death of his friend's mother, Mrs. Donner (a kind woman who worked hard all her life to support her family and help her friends), and he scolded Alison angrily and said: "People who shouldn't be hungry are starving, people who shouldn't be loved are loved, people who shouldn't be dead are dying." It should be said that anger is inevitable, but after "anger", you only feel "powerless" and lose energy. This is a key!This doomed him to be trapped in a desperate situation of hesitation and depression forever, and became the protagonist of the tragedy!

From Alison's conversation with his father, the author speaks out the common problems of the old and young generations: "You're sad because everything's changed. Jimmy's sad because nothing's the same. But neither of you dare to face the truth. . . There must be something wrong somewhere, right?" In the dialogue between Alison and Helena: helena you knowI've found out what's wrong with Jimmy.In fact, it is very simple, he was born in the wrong era. Alison Yes, I know. Helena no longer had that kind of place now—sexually, or politically, or otherwise.So he was always talking like that.Sometimes, listening to him, I think he is living in the middle of the French Revolution.Of course, they should have lived in that period.He didn't know where he was, or where he was going.He can never do anything, and he can never be anything. In the end, they live a life of “running away from it all” in despair.Jimmy and Alison "become little fur-covered animals with fur-brains".Jimmy is a bear and Alison is a squirrel because they "can't take the pain of being human anymore"! But in such a society, animals cannot live in peace.Jimmy, weary and weak, said softly and bitterly: "...We must also be careful, because there are cruel steel traps ambush everywhere, just waiting for those little crazy, slightly vicious, and very timid animals. Right?" They embraced each other mournfully and called to each other: "Poor squirrel!" "Poor, poor bear!" Amidst the voice, the curtain fell! On the eve of the total collapse of imperial colonialism, where should young British people who do not want to be "hairy-brained animals" go?I've been thinking about it.January 22, 1959, Beijing.