SOURCE: "John Osborne: Look Forward in Fear," in Essays on Contemporary British Drama, edited by Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim, Max Hueber Verlag, 1981, pp. 5-30.

In the following essay, Gale identifies fear of the future as the emotional center of John Osborne's West of Suez, Watch It Come Down, and other plays of the 1970s.

In 1956 John Osborne's Look Back in Anger exploded across the English stage with intense anger in a bitter indictment of modern British life. A mixture of despair and black humor were contained in the attacks on humanity, social classes, politics, economics, and the educational system leveled by Jimmy Porter, the drama's main character. Jimmy's expressions of wrath were frequently indiscriminate and overwhelming. While he attempted to expose his wife to the realities and meanings of life so that she would be moved out of her complacency, the underlying hurt which motivated Jimmy's actions...