The Angry Young Men

"The angry young men were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis.

John Osborne’s play, Look Back in Anger, was the huge literary work that influenced the concept of the Angry Young Men. Osborne wrote the play to express what it felt like to live in England during the 1950s. The main issues that Angry Young Men had were "impatience with the status quo, refusal to be co-opted by a bankrupt society and an instinctive solidarity with the lower classes." Referred to as "kitchen sink realism," literary works began to deal with lower class themes. In the decades prior to Osborne and other authors, less attention had been given to literature that illuminated the treatment and living circumstances experienced by the lower classes. As the Angry Young Men movement began to articulate these themes, the acceptance of related issues was more widespread. Osborne depicted these issues within his play through the eyes of his protagonist, Jimmy. Throughout the play, Jimmy was seeing "the wrong people go hungry, the wrong people be loved, the wrong people dying".

In post-World War Britain, the quality of life for lower class citizens was very poor; Osborne used this theme to demonstrate how the state of Britain was guilty of neglect towards those that needed assistance the most. In the play there are comparisons of educated people with savages, illuminating the major difference between classes. Alison remarks on this issue while she, Jimmy and Cliff are sharing an apartment, stating how "she felt she had been placed into a jungle". Jimmy was represented as an embodiment of the young, rebellious post-war generation that questioned the state and its actions.