THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN

The Angry Young Men are a group of writers that originated in Great Britain in 1950s. One of the
main ideas connecting these authors as a group was protest against the conventional values of society in
England in the period in 20th century. Writers included in this generation were mostly coming from lower
class in English society and their resentment was aimed mainly against the upper class, which they
scorned. On the contrary, due to the reason, their mind and way of living were deeply rooted in the life of
lower classes; these angry young men secretly admired and envied the young nouveau riches. The main
character appearing in their work is a young and intelligent man, very often educated at a university.
Despite his education and intelligence, this young man is predetermined to the life in poverty, due to the
roots he comes from. He knows he will never be able to reach extreme wealth, however he rejects to
come to terms with his determined fate. The only and easiest way out of such unhappy destiny appears in
a marriage with a young pretty girl from the upper class even though from the beginning the aspect of
calculation predominates above the aspect of love.
Historical background. Great Britain was still recovering from the devastation of World War I
when World War II struck. British society was still altered and unsettled when WWII started; citizens
were not yet used to the new kind of everyday life that was pushed upon them, so the thought of re-
entering warfare was completely unwelcome. Once WWII had ended, the double impact of
unpreparedness for war and the inability to fully reorganize their life afterwards put a strain on British
society. Of the arts,
literature especially suffered. Publishers were hampered both by a serious shortage in the supply
and quality of paper, much of which was needed for official purposes, and also by extensive destruction
of their stock of books in the course of German bombing raids on London.
The period during and after World War II was hard enough for writers to have their works
published, but it was even harder to have their works actually picked up by readers. Even after the war,
the issues for writers and publishers continued: the war impacted every aspect of life in Britain, even the
creative aspects. This period lasted up until the early 1950s, when writers had recovered from their
creative shock and began to assess the consequences of WWII.
One of the main consequences that became a major interest for writers was the social impact that
the war had upon society. It is the assessment of social structure and interaction that the Angry Young
Men began to write about in the fifties.
The term “Angry Young Man” was not applied to the group until after John Osborne’s play Look
Back in Anger was published, but the writers who are typically associated with the term were quickly
grouped together because of the immediacy of their works being published. One of the most popular
authors of the AYM (Angry Young Men) was Kingsley Amis, whose work, Lucky Jim, was among the
first “angry” works to be published. The most interesting aspect of the AYM is that none of the authors
identified themselves as relevant to each other, much as less as members of the same movement. Kingsley
Amis, for instance, believed that the movement was the result of the need for a seemingly new aspect in
literature.
Many scholars note that multiple AYM authors did not even get along with each other, so they
abhorred the thought of being thematically grouped together.
Despite the quarreling and disagreement over the term “Angry Young Men,” there are undeniable
similarities between the works of AYM authors; the major one is that the main character is always an
angry young man. Although the cause and display of this anger may be drastically different between the
works, the consistent characteristic of the angry character is that he cannot blend into society.
Another significant characteristic that the angry young man usually possesses is that he has
received an education that conflicts with his living standards. These characters are usually quite
intelligent, but they are unable to move up the social ladder because of the strict social structure within
Britain. Their inability to do so conflicts greatly with their intelligence: surely, smart people ought to
become more wealthy. Not only should they have more money, but they should also have more influence
in society. These characters are much smarter than their peers, and yet they are virtually ignored. A final
significant feature that AYM works share is that they tend to discuss prevalent social stagnation and its
consequences but offer no solutions.
Two of the most important and thereby most famous writers of the AYM were Kingsley Amis and
John Osborne. Amis was already a successful novelist, critic, and poet by the time that the AYM arrived,
but Osborne was a struggling new playwright with very little success.
Sir Kingsley Amis was educated at the City of London School and at St. John’s College, Oxford. His
education was interrupted during World War II by his service as a lieutenant in the Royal Corps of
Signals. From 1949 to 1961 he taught at universities in Wales, England, and the United States.
Amis’s first novel, Lucky Jim (1954, filmed 1957), was an immediate success and remains his most
popular work. Its disgruntled antihero, a young university instructor named Jim Dixon, epitomized a
newly important social group that had risen by dint of scholarships from lower-middle-class and working-
class backgrounds only to find the more comfortable perches still occupied by the well-born. Lucky Jim
prompted critics to group Amis with the Angry Young Men, who expressed similar social discontent.
Amis’s next novel, That Uncertain Feeling (1955), had a similar antihero. A visit to Portugal resulted in
the novel I Like It Here (1958), while observations garnered from a teaching stint in the United States
were expressed in the novel One Fat Englishman (1963).
Amis went on to write more than 40 books, including some 20 novels, many volumes of poetry, and
several collections of essays. His apparent lack of sympathy with his characters and his sharply satirical
rendering of well-turned dialogue were complemented by his own curmudgeonly public persona. Notable
among his later novels were The Green Man (1969), Jake’s Thing (1978), and The Old Devils (1986). As
a poet, Amis was a representative member of a group sometimes called “The Movement,” whose poems
began appearing in 1956 in the anthology New Lines. Poets belonging to this school wrote understated
and disciplined verse that avoided experimentation and grandiose themes. In 1990 Amis was knighted,
and his Memoirs were published in 1991.
John Osborne, in full John James Osborne (1929- 1994), British playwright and film producer
whose Look Back in Anger (performed 1956) ushered in a new movement in British drama and made him
known as the first of the “Angry Young Men”. Look Back in Anger (1956) is a play by John Osborne. It
concerns a love triangle involving an intelligent and educated but disaffected young man of working-class
origin (Jimmy Porter), his upper-middle-class, impassive wife (Alison), and her haughty best friend
(Helena Charles). Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace. The play was a success on
the London stage, and spawned the term "angry young men" to describe Osborne and those of his
generation who employed the harshness of realism in the theatre in contrast to the more escapist theatre
that characterized the previous generation. Look Back in Anger was a strongly autobiographical piece
based on Osborne's unhappy marriage to actress Pamela Lane and their life in cramped accommodation in
Derby. While Osborne aspired towards a career in theatre, Lane was more practical and materialistic, not
taking Osborne's ambitions seriously while cuckolding him with a local dentist. It also draws from
Osborne's earlier life; for example, the wrenching speech of witnessing a loved one's death was a replay
of the death of his father, Thomas.