to her by anything. Having lost her baby, Alison comes back, and Helena leaves Jimmy. In his frustration Jimmy voices what is his indictment of society: They all want to escape from the pain of being alive. And, most of all, from love. I always knew something like this would turn up - some problem, like an ill wife - and it would be too much for those delicate, hot-house feelings of yours. It s no good trying to fool yourself about love. You can t fall into it like a soft job, without dirtying up your hands. It takes muscles and guts. And if you can t bear the thought of messing up your nice, clean soul, you d better give up the whole idea of life. Helena and Alison seem to understand what Jimmy is saying. They love him, not because they agree with his attacks on religion, love or genteel society, but because they recognize and respond to his human energy.other characters of the play only help to reveal Jimmy s conflict with the society, the reasons of his anger, bitterness and solitude that runs through the whole play. Jimmy protests against his being inferior, against decency of the society, respectability of the middle class. He is a tragic figure: no ideals, no hope, no love. Jimmy is a rebel, having no programme and aim. He is dull - neither negative nor positive. We feel concerned with his irritable character as if everything got mixed in him, with his own jargon, his own mode of life, his brusque humour and bitter irony. His protest is typical for a definite age of 20 and 30 years. But at least he is honest: he protests against being inferior in the society. Do you know - I have discovered what is wrong with Jimmy? says Helena. It s very simple really. He was born out of his time. There s no place for people like that any longer - in sex, or politics, or anything ... he thinks he s still in the middle of the French Revolution. He doesn t know where he is, or where he s going. in Osborne s play the hero is at odds with the world around him, still he is deeply related to this society even when he is rebelling against it, rebelling without aim, for the world of today is not treating him according to his expectations.Osborne s play Epitaph for George Dillon also displays a good deal of sympathy for the English life he satirizes. A young man, George Dillon, who wishes to write great plays, is taken in by a lower middle-class family. George thinks of the family as a series of caricatures, a group of people who speak only in terms of accounts and ads and the latest programmes on television. Yet dull and commonplace as these people are, George takes advantage of them. He sponges money and food, seduces their daughter, plays upon the mother s feeling for their son who was killed in the war. He begins to write trash for weekly repertory theatres and makes a good deal of money. The family, insensitive to his artistic betrayal, are delighted that all their notions of an artist and a gentleman have been so grandly reinforced. Yet George s success and the fact that the daughter of the house has become pregnant force George into marrying the girl and becoming a permanent part of the family.Osborne s heroes are young men, who have obtained a university education in some second-rate provincial university. After graduation they work, as a rule, at some modest post as librarians, office clerks, salesmen, etc. Their behaviour is often challenging and far from being correct. Their dull life depresses them and therefore they are angry with themselves and with the people they come in touch with. But after having loudly uttered their discontent, they all make, each in a different way, a compromise with the society they have been revolting against, they become easily satisfied with some material gain. They do not have any higher social ideals.
Kingsley Amis
1922-1995of the most widely read of contemporary British writers, Kingsley Amis was born in London. He began to write poetry when he was still a student at Oxford. Soon several successful novels followed: Lucky Jim (1953), That Uncertain Feeling (1955), I Like It Here (1958), Take a Girl Like You (1960), One Fat Englishman (1963). The above mentioned...
