The Theme of Anger in Ghosts and Look Back in Anger In spite of the difference in the timing between publishing Ghosts and Look Back in Anger, the two plays share lots of themes. This essay will focus on the theme of anger in both plays and how it affects the characters. Ghosts and Look Back in Anger are both written in two turbulent times in history. The first is performed at a time when women are supposed to follow the rules of the cult of true womanhood. They suffer a lot and it is considered a taboo for women to speak up and defy traditions and institutions. The later is written after World War Two. This is a very important time for the youth. They had just experienced the calamity of two major wars and understood that the American Dream
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Some historical backgrounds are considered a taboo that should not be discussed. For example, both plays attack institutionalized religion and undermine familial relationships despite the fact that those are beliefs taken for granted in the society. Institutionalized religion is portrayed in Ghosts and Look Back in Anger as a hypocritical institution that only contributes in making the lives of the characters worse and, in return, in increasing their anger. Mrs. Alving, in Ghosts, believes that Pastor Manders is the family pious friend who will help them. However, with the passage of time she realizes that he is a hypocritical man who only cares about his reputation and does not really care about his religion. A great proof of that is the fact that he conspires with Engstrand to lie and hide the fact that he is the reason behind the orphanage’s fire. Being not understood even by the closest friends and losing faith in religion makes Mrs. Alving decide to plan her own way of living to the extent that she starts lying and hiding the truth even from her own son. Her anger …show more content…
Jimmy Porter is not a political activist: he is a man living day- to –day in a world in which feelings and imaginative response to others has been deadened by conventions’’. This idea is applicable to both Ghosts and Look Back in Anger. We get to know how the characters feel in the two plays. Regina and Jimmy experience an identity crisis. Regina is educated and raised in a middle class home. Later on, she learns the truth about who her real father is, but she feels as if she belongs nowhere. She can neither stay at the Alvings nor feel that she is one of the middle class respectable women. Her anger makes her decide to work in an immoral job with Pastor Manders and Engstrand. Jimmy, in Look Back in Anger, goes through almost the same experience. He is well educated yet he is neither accepted as a middle class man nor as a poor man. Everyone says that operating a sweet stall does not suit a man like him, but he cannot find any other job. Almost all the main characters in Ghosts and Look Back in Anger feel that people are oblivious to their pain and that no one understands them. Their lack of communication does not help them realize that every person in the world is suffering in his own way regardless of the different
Some historical backgrounds are considered a taboo that should not be discussed. For example, both plays attack institutionalized religion and undermine familial relationships despite the fact that those are beliefs taken for granted in the society. Institutionalized religion is portrayed in Ghosts and Look Back in Anger as a hypocritical institution that only contributes in making the lives of the characters worse and, in return, in increasing their anger. Mrs. Alving, in Ghosts, believes that Pastor Manders is the family pious friend who will help them. However, with the passage of time she realizes that he is a hypocritical man who only cares about his reputation and does not really care about his religion. A great proof of that is the fact that he conspires with Engstrand to lie and hide the fact that he is the reason behind the orphanage’s fire. Being not understood even by the closest friends and losing faith in religion makes Mrs. Alving decide to plan her own way of living to the extent that she starts lying and hiding the truth even from her own son. Her anger …show more content…
Jimmy Porter is not a political activist: he is a man living day- to –day in a world in which feelings and imaginative response to others has been deadened by conventions’’. This idea is applicable to both Ghosts and Look Back in Anger. We get to know how the characters feel in the two plays. Regina and Jimmy experience an identity crisis. Regina is educated and raised in a middle class home. Later on, she learns the truth about who her real father is, but she feels as if she belongs nowhere. She can neither stay at the Alvings nor feel that she is one of the middle class respectable women. Her anger makes her decide to work in an immoral job with Pastor Manders and Engstrand. Jimmy, in Look Back in Anger, goes through almost the same experience. He is well educated yet he is neither accepted as a middle class man nor as a poor man. Everyone says that operating a sweet stall does not suit a man like him, but he cannot find any other job. Almost all the main characters in Ghosts and Look Back in Anger feel that people are oblivious to their pain and that no one understands them. Their lack of communication does not help them realize that every person in the world is suffering in his own way regardless of the different