Post war British fiction

The second WW marks a point in the development of engl. literature which bares distinct signs of
a break or change in the fictional tradition. In the 1940 when D.H.Lawrence Woolf Joyce died a
whole creative phase in the remaking of the novel into an instrument of modern expression
seemed to come to an end.The general athmosphere engendered a spirit of discontent and
anxietynand although a number of writers who have begun their cariers before the war such as: L.
DDurrell, M. Lowry E. Waugh G. Green significantlly extended them afterwards, a new
generation of writers appeared influenced by a change social climate which bread a new estetic
climate the modern estetic faded the new generation of writers were radicaly different in temper
and commitment from their predecesors.They dismissed the largest achievements of the modern
novel and reached back to 18 and 19 century surces Fielding, Dickens Bennett Eliot seeking
though in a minor key to reinstate realism and the social novel. They made a novel not of mode of
experiment but a practical instrument of expression founding their reactions on the argument that
experimentalists had shopped and puzzled common readers and while concentrating on man alone
discredited the novel as a form in the eyes of the readers Kingsley Amis John Braine Jhon Wain
Allan Sillitoe were labeled " the angry young men " though most of them were not young and they
themselves denied belonging to such a heterogenous grupe which never formed a school or had a
common credo their novels were a protest against a society which failed to fullfill their hopes they
brought back the popularity of the provincial seting which had been avoided by the metropolitat
wrt because it was considered dull and unfashionable in their concern to avoid being whit the
Bloomsbury the picaresc young men living an unsistematic life as a rejection of the old jamesian
concept of form in the novel.
Philip Larkin 1982 1985 Larkin's hero Jhon Kemp became the main model in British fiction and
drama this type of heroes the inteligent and ereverant young man from the lower or lower middle
classes reflects the post war British society and demonstrates a good deal of similarities with one
another. They are all better educated then their fathers were they are all concerned with getting
jobs and women in a competitive society they all worry how they can operate in a world in which
they have only limited controlle in a society full of class changes the young man finds moving to
one class to another superficially easier and his main concern is the soc possition never the last the
lack of political interest turns their protest into an incoherent rebeliousness thiis are all novels of
cconductnand class the old ones with customs reases themselves and the english novel of the
period becomes a contemplation of lower or lower middle class use.
Jhon Brain 1922 86 Joe Lampton in Brain's Room at the Top and Life at the Top is a social
climber who tries by all meansto change his life he does not confuse means and ends though
confusing love with money together with his class he abandons his and heads straight for the
money knowing exactly what he wants he obtains it because his efforts are dubbled to a lack of
scrupules characteristic to the noverish. The mask he has to asume is in contrast with his nature
and what Joe realises only gradually is that his victory is in fact a personal defeat. However his
anger has been temporarily satisfied. Allan Sillitoe 1928 2010 Another rebel Arthur Seaton in
Allans Saturday Night and Sunday Morning belongs to the working class in a period of some
economic frlourishing after the end of the war his picaresque adv. form the sping of the novel
which describes in fact the whole style isolation of the hero who lacking ideologi rebels against a
soc in which he does not belive in. Several other wrt are thematically det to demonstrate the
morals and dignity of the individual in a chaotic world they often express simphaty for the lower

classes for thoes not automaticaly granted the privilage of an inherited position. Moral issues are
dealt with which are not specifically social or political. Almost all these novels are searches for
identity efforts on the part of the hero to understand and define who or what he is, language in this
novels is simple often rude or insolant in keeping with the crisis of outlook an vocational
perspectives the style is plain the events are presented chronologicaly the athmosphere is never
idealized but some inbuilt humanity is always present to make up for the lack of novelistic
artifices.
John Wain 19 are populated with heroes whose apparantly hectic lives culminate with their
acceptance of the patterns of the society they live in. Hurry on Down is ddirectly in the picaresque
novel Charles Lumley holds half a dozen jobs in as many places before settleling down though
belonging to the bursiosie by education and speech he detests his own class and deribelatelly
desends the ladder from the middle class to the ground floor in an attempt to resist any labeling or
self definition but with all his attempts of loosing his " markings" Charles can neighter ignor nor
resign from society. each of his jobs caries some sort of class identification so the best solution is
to ridicule the world. Charles voyage is meant to prove that no total escape is posible one is still
dependent on material society.Edgard Banks in Living in the Present starts on a journey whose
aim is to find reason for living finding no value in his society he decides to comit suicide but first
to read mankind of a neofascist whom he trapped down from London to Sweterland but at the
crucial moment he is unable to kill eighter the emeny or himself and he discoveres that goodness
honesty and love are suficient justification for living
Kingsley Aimis is one of the leading representatives of the angry generation and the finest British
comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century. Jim Dixon his hero in Lucky Jim is
surellyb the most popular antihero of the time he openes the galery of inteligent characters who
need to break out to see a new congenial environment in which they can be defined as individuals.
He is the lower middle class young man who by a stroack of luck has been given a job in a
provincial university Dixon detests priviledge and all he ask from life is enough money for bear
cigaretts and a nice girls friend during his years of probation he makes a lot of mistakes and is
fired but finally he achieves more than he had dreamed of he gets the job that his proffesors son
was after as well as his daughter the novel is essentialy an English University novel in a tradition
later continued by David Lodge
As Ifor Evans reremarked the 30 and 40 were a period rather of great artists rather then greate wrt
such artists as Lawrence Olivier gave mainly in shakespearian plays the theatre has sufered with
the war and in 94 Hittler contrives to do what even the puritans have failed to achieve by closing
the London theatree the major theatrical adventure of the post war years was the establishment of
a company at the Royal Court theatre. Here in 1956 came John Osborne's Look back in anger
which caught the imagination of a generation and was later filmed and translated into many
languages he broke into the theatre with what seemed an autentic picture of the post W.W soc this
was a turning point in modern theatre
John Osborne was born in London and educated at a miner public school in Belmont College in
Devon from 1943 to 45 when he was expelled after tring his hand at trade journalism( reports on
the movements and developments of the bussiness world by way of articles or analisis) and
working for a while as a tutor of a company of junior actors he entered the theatre himself as an
actor and assistant stage manager in Anthony Creighton's provincial repertory theatre he soon

started writing his own plays the first two The Devil Inside and Personal enemy were coauthored
this were followed by hie greates succes Look Back in Anger the entertainer 1977 confirmed his
skill and by showing Archie Rice a shabby flamboiant selfdeceiving character of the decay of the
english music hall seemed by some strange simbolism to image a decay in England itself. Epitaph
for George Dillon with Anthony Creighton is a brilliant play on a realistic contemporary theme
once again set in the shabbyest lower middle classed setting. The dialog captured all the rrythms
deficiences and abruptness of conversation with great dramatic effectiveness. Osborne gave an
image of the share drireness of this type of life and the complete absence of power of his
characters to escape from it at its center is George Dillon itself rebelious faceless who once sought
to be an actor and had a vision of someting better then the sordid theme in which now he played a
parasitic part Luther in 1961 showes Osborne operating in 16 cent germany instead of mid 20
england and dealing with the much idealized england of martin luther. and class hatered is less
aparent in this play Osborne portrais a sens of spiritual and of self turment of debasement the
challange to empirial authority with an admiration for it and at the end the break down into
sentiment. Inadmissible evidence is a study of sex absorbed solicitor defending himself in a semy
simbolical court while A Patriot for Me brings a freshness of aproach in the quasi historical study
of a homosexual austrian officer O. was interested in public themes such as the nature of english
identity and the loss of Empire as he was impurelly individual themes he still dwels at this topics
in the Hotel in Amsterdam and West of Suez though he's implicit stance is now conservative rather
then radical some of his later plays are A sense of detatchement, The End Of Me, Old cigar, Watch
it come down, and Dejavu 1992. O. was also a screen wrt for films and the TV and adapted works
of Shackespear Ibson and Streaberg he one an oscar for his 1963 adaptation of Tom JonesTome. In
his later years he publised w novels of autobiography A better class of Person and Almost a
Gentelman.
Look back in anger is at once a surviving work of drama and a sort of historical document vividly
incapsulating a whole attitude of mind a whole aproach to life which had its most powerfull appeal
in the middle and the late 1950. In its time the play was a social rallying cry its significance in the
develop. of the british theatre became aparent only later the context in which the play apeard both
theatrical and social is very important to its full understanding and apreciation. Clearlly the old
order of things was dead: the british had to face the fact that they wereno longer a front rank world
power and even those who would never have conciouslly suported Imperialist tactics were shaken
up and desoriented in their ideas of the world and its ways. A new kind of hero emerged in engl lit
the earliest examples of which are to be found in the novels of John Wain and Kingsley. They are
rebels against the establish order but their rebelion is frivolous they do not even feel the need for
ideals by which to live they are in this way tipical fantasy projections of the disaffected moods of
very young and inteligent people at the time. Look after being returned by several agents in
London was finally accepted by the newly formed English Stage Company who's first three
productionss having failed they badly needed a succes in oder to survive as a theatrical
group.Their announced aim was " to be a writer's theatre offering a platform for interesting new
drama, plays by writers already distinguished in other fields and the work of completlly new
writers" therefore the artistic director George Divine was eager to accept the play in which he
recognize the new post war spirit. The play got mixt reviews and was rather felt as a failiure untill
Kenneth Tynem from the Observer wrote about it " it is the best young play of its decade" , a

statement which then subsequently trigered the big comercial succes of the play and aloud
Osbourne toleave his licky house boat and become the most promising playwright of the year, a
wealthy , angry young man" the phrase was invented by a part time officer George Fearon who
thought the play would be imposible to market.
The mainhero of the play Jimmy Porter is an inteligent young man with a working class
background and a university education who has withdrawn into earning his living by running a
sweet stoll in the market of some Middland Town and in general living rather lautish life but at the
same time he does not happyly unthinkinglly accept his way of life. In the middle of a dietribe
against women and their influence on mens life he delivers what has become his most famous
single statement: " i supose peopleof our generation aren't able to die for good causes any longer
we had all that done for us in the 30 and the 40 when we werestill kids. There aren't any good ,
brave causes left." Lines like these expressing at once a sense of aimlessness in life and anguishe
over this sense instantly made Jimmy a cult figure a hero for a generation which wanted to protest
but did not quite know what about and certainly had little feeling that any protest was likelly to
have any important effect on the course of events, Jimmy Porter instantly becamealthough in a
rather vague way the literary spokesman for a whole generation and this undoubtelly had an
important effect on the public career in the play and on the turn the British theatre as a whole was
to take the extraordinary wave of activity which was to become known as " the new " drama. The
theatrical style of the play is basically naturalistic its construction though a little untidy is not to
far removed from its conventions its plot line is relativelly simple in the opening scene we witness
the troubled home life of the Prter family built up in small beliavable touches ( the sesion at the
ironing board by Jimmy's wife Alison helped considerably to establish another journalistic tag of
the period the "kitchen-sink dramas"). We gather that Jimmy is a bully Alison a long suffering
doormat who has to put up with having her upper-middle class background thrown in her face
every 5 minutes and Cliff who lives with them is the easy going stooge who provides a convenient
audience for the railying of the one and the more reticent complaints of the other. The situation is
complicated somewhat by the arival of Helena an old friend of Alison's with an air of being " the
gracious representative of visiting royalty". Before long she has packed Alison off home to her
father to have the baby she dared not admit to Jimmy she was expecting and by the end of the
second act Helena falls into the arms of Jimmy. In the second act Cliff offers to leave and Jimmy
lets him than Allison returns to anounce the baby was still born Helena leaves and as the courtain
falls Jimmy and Alison are rejoined in a childish play of bears and squirrels. What gives strenght
to this slim story is notso much the development of character the built of dramatic suspans but
rather the flaiming retoric of the big speeches which are presented rather like areas in an opera .
An opera in which the Devil( Jimmy) gets all the good tunes the only chr. inthe play whoseems to
be given any simpathy by the author is Alison.'s father the much derided colonel. He is given a
quiet authorithy and human simpathy which suggests that Osbourne's regard for himis
verydifferent from Jimmy.
The Edwardian survivers in Osbourne's laterplays are always depicted with respect and even
affection Alison's father is showen to be the fatherfigure that one rebels against even while one
knowes deep down that he is right on his side. Jimmy Porter and his creator's left wing point of
view and anger are spiced with nostalgia for even if the young men may disapprove of the British
Raj( Reign) . Is the name given to the British colonial rule in SAsia between 1858 and 1947.)
andthe way it ruled in the Hey Day of British Imperial power at the same time he has to admit that

people in those days had what henow shauth desperetlly and in vain- phisical and emotional
security . They belived in their causes even if they werewrong and were confident that they were
partin the great tide of progress.
In its contradictions above all Look is an intenselly english play comming as it did at a crucial
moment in history of the english man's regard for himself and its place in the world it somehow
caught in its microcosm a whole complex of emotions a love hate relationship with the past a
sense of pourposelessnes in the present a failure to imagine a future to all which in one way or
another infected most english men of the time. Reason rational analisis have neverbeen Osbourne's
strong point the emotional impact of theplay was all the more incidious because ambiguous the
play constantlly saing more then the author was aware of and it is this very ambiguity the
emotional complexity beneath a series of statements which may seem simplistic on the surface
that keep the play alive and working today. The veryintensity with which the play evoches its own
period and the emotional climate of the 1950 gives it a sort of universality as a pice of living
theatre far beyond a mare historical apreciation.