Jimmy as the Angry Youngman

The term Angry Youngman coined to describe the condition of unfocussed, but all pervasive resentment and frustration that many saw as the defining character of post war youth, soon became a catch phrase in its application not just to Jimmy but to all other subsequent characters like him in literature, drama and cinema and was not restricted to Britain. Jimmy is not just a voice for Osborne's view since right from the begining of the play he is presented with irony. It is not being here suggested that Jimmy is a hypocrite or that his feeling are no more than a desire for attention from the other character and the audience, but rather that an element of posturing is inseparable from the very concept of the angry young man. If nothing else this makes such a characte more human and fallible and endears him to the spectators, since an essential condition for the success of the character is that he be easily identified with, an aim that is part of the play's thurst towards feeling as being more honest and more difficult to attain to, than thought is. One of Jimmy's characteristics is a lack of awareness, partly his ignorance of Alison's pregnancy and partly the failure to realize how his own values are subject to criticism he makes of colonel Redfern's how wrong he is to suppose Alison cold and impersonal. Self pity is another evident trait, as in the scence where he attempts to offer a crudely psychoanalytic explanation for his misogyny, tracing it to his mother's neglect of his dying father. All the same, Jimmy is far from lacking in either sincerity or in biting wit.
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