SOURCE: Dixon, Graham A. “Still Looking Back: The Deconstruction of the Angry Young Man in Look Back in Anger and Déjàvu.” Modern Drama 37, no. 3 (fall 1994): 521-29.

In the following essay, Dixon maintains that Osborne's later play Déjàvu provides insight into Jimmy Porter's powerlessness in Look Back in Anger.

To “deconstruct” would be to think—in the most faithful interior way—in the concepts of a discipline, but at the same time to determine—from a certain exterior that is unqualifiable or unnameable by (that discipline)—what … it has been able to dissimulate or forbid.¹

Why don't you shut up? My mother liked the play. Both my grandmothers are alive. One saw it on television. I think she liked it.²

Next time he will let us know what he is angry about … Pretty déjàvu. I'd say. You're still a cunt.³

Robert Egan locates...