Editing Angry young men (section)

===''Look Back in Anger''===
Osborne's play ''Look Back in Anger'' was the monumental literary work that influenced the concept of the Angry Young Man. He 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, an instinctive solidarity with the lower classes". Referred to as "[[kitchen sink realism]]", literary works began to deal with lower class themes.<ref name=gill/> 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".<ref name=weis>{{cite journal |last=Weiss |first=Samuel |date=1960 |title=Osborne's Angry Young Play |journal=Educational Theatre Journal |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=285–288|doi=10.2307/3204555 |jstor=3204555 }}</ref>

In Britain, following the Second World War, the quality of life for lower-class citizens was still poor;{{r|life19580526}} Osborne used this theme to demonstrate how the state of Britain was guilty of neglect towards those who 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. ''Look Back in Anger'' provided some of its audience with the hope that Osborne's work would revitalise the British theatre and enable it to act as a "harbinger of the [[New left|New Left]]".<ref name=weis/>