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John Osborne's early plays, "A Subject of Scandal and Concern" and "Luther," emerged out of the author's anti-nuclear activism and his anger regarding the role of Britain's political leaders in the escalation of Cold-War tensions that led to the Berlin Crisis of 1961. An effort to examine and redefine blasphemy in personal terms led Osborne to dramatize the trials of two historical figures—George Holyoake and Luther—whose conscientious objections against orthodox belief led to their being put on trial for blasphemy. These plays suggest that Osborne came to view blasphemy as a form of hurtful speech ("blasphemia") used by Church and State to silence and punish those who speak out conscientiously against orthodox religious belief. The manner in which Osborne dramatizes the unhappy domestic lives of Holyoake and Luther, read in the context of the playwright's own troubled relationships, suggests that he recognized that the crime of blasphemy also resulted when personal conviction or conscientious action brought suffering upon friends and family. Despite electing to dramatize historical cases of blasphemy, Osborne wanted his audiences to recognize that both the charge and offence of blasphemy and submission to orthodox viewpoints had very dangerous consequences in the Cold-War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics such as Dan Rebellato and Dominic Shellard are questioning the seminal influence of John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" on the development of post-war British drama. The result is a renewed appreciation for the plays of Noël Coward and Terrence Rattigan. The present article seeks to define the contribution of John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" to contemporary British drama by comparing it with Coward's "The Vortex" and Rattigan's "The Deep Blue Sea." It argues for "Look Back in Anger's" enduring importance, claiming that it assumes a more complex and troubling relationship between perception, cognition, and articulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's analysis of John Osborne's 1956 play "Look Back in Anger." He suggests that the Greek myth of Oedipus and play "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles are connected to the work by Osborne. The author invokes the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud in connection with the myth to illustrate the main character's relationship with women.

The author attempts to apply the psychoanalytic concept of “prolonged adolescence” to two literary works, both of which are embedded in England’s postwar social and political climate. The discussion of John Wain’s Hurry on Down ([1953] 1979) and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (), by necessity, involves a look at those factors responsible for shaping the cultural “mood” in those days. However, the author’s primary concern lies with how two particular (fictional) individuals, or antiheroes, deal with the frustration, which, although generally felt among contemporary academia, in their cases seems to hide a much deeper layer of mental insecurity and instability. In fact, we come to feel that the characters have not achieved a proper sense of identity (“self”) and are, from the point of view of maturity, delayed and, hence, “unfitted” to cope adequately with the external world. Having long achieved formal adulthood, they seem to have gotten “stuck” somewhere along the passage of growing up. Essential papers by Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna, as well as a very early paper on the topic by Siegfried Bernfeld, are, among others, taken into account, as is the profound research done by Peter Blos on the subject in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]