Anger, Paralysis and Violence: A Selection of English-Speaking Dramatists from the Second Half of the 20th Century

This thesis seeks to investigate and analyse the troubled and defining decades of the 1950s and 1960s in the United Kingdom through a selection of English-speaking dramatists of the second half of the 20th Century. The world saw, after having witnessed half century of societal and political changes, conflicts and atrocities committed against mankind, its certainties being swept away. The world ceased being familiar and known. It became, I argue, to use Sigmund Freud’s definition, Das Unheimliche (i.e., The Uncanny). The uncanny, indeed, refers to something which is known and familiar, yet it is also repulsive and terrifying, paralyzing even. Thus, post-war years witnessed an increasing uncertainty underlying the very core of human life. Reality became unfamiliar and therefore questioned. The purpose of this thesis is to look at the ways in which writers of the time provided their own response to the events they were witnessing. Specifically, this thesis focuses on post-war British Theatre. I argue that playwrights such as John Osborne (1929-1994), Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), and Edward Bond (1934-) have seized the zeitgeist of their time, giving voice to the sense of disillusionment and feelings of uprootedness of post-war reality. The first chapter will shed light on the historical and socio-political background. This introductory chapter provides a brief comment on the societal, economic, and political sphere of the United Kingdom, mandatory for grasping and understanding the context of the defining decades this thesis seeks to analyse. The second chapter will focus on John Osborne and his play Look Back in Anger (1956). Osborne, along with his antihero Jimmy Porter, became the spokesman of a generation of angry people, thus being the leader of the Angry Young Men Movement. The new generation voiced their deep dissatisfaction and disappointment with British society, rejecting its rigid class structure and denouncing social alienation and inequalities. The third chapter will deal with Samuel Beckett and Happy Days (1961). Attention will be paid on the concept of stasis that affects Winnie, the main protagonist. The stasis, both physical and psychological, is symptomatic of an annihilating reality as well as of a personal trauma she struggles to cope with. Finally, the fourth and final chapter will deal with Edward Bond’s Saved (1965). Bond, a politically committed playwright, was keen on exposing the violence and alienation underlying contemporary and capitalist society, guilty of neglecting and marginalizing its individuals. By staging violent and repulsive images, the so-called “aggro-effects”, Edward Bond aimed at shocking his audience in order to elicit a political awareness on their part, thus leading to a radical change in political and societal terms.