30 pages • 1 hour read
John OsborneLook Back in Anger
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IIIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act III, Scene 1 Summary
Several months have passed. It is another Sunday evening. Jimmy and Cliff are sitting in their chairs again, reading newspapers. This time, Helena stands at the ironing board. She is wearing one of Jimmy’s old shirts. Cliff and Jimmy start talking about politics and the middle class again. Helena adds something to the conversation every now and then. Cliff and Jimmy then begin a comic routine, singing and dancing, and Helena joins in with her rehearsed lines. Eventually, Jimmy gets tired and begins attacking Cliff’s performance. Cliff and Jimmy begin wrestling playfully again and Cliff’s shirt is dirtied. Helena takes Cliff’s shirt and goes to launder it. While she is gone, Cliff asks him if his relationship feels strange with Helena, then admits that he is leaving soon to find a wife to take care of him. Helena reenters with the newly laundered shirt and instructs Cliff to hang it in his room. When Cliff leaves, Helena and Jimmy nearly argue, but then Jimmy changes and the two become loving toward one another. As Helena professes her love for Jimmy, the door opens and Alison walks in. She is visibly sick. Jimmy says nothing to her. He leaves he room, leaving Alison and Helena alone together.
Act III, Scene 2 Summary
Alison and Helena are in the front room together. Jimmy’s trumpet can be heard in the background. Alison tells Helena that she has had a miscarriage. Though Helena is apologetic for being with Jimmy, Alison dismisses it. She says she has not come to take Jimmy back. She honestly does not know why she came. She does not want to make things difficult for Helena and Jimmy. Helena again apologizes and says that she has realized something herself. She knows now that what she and Jimmy have been doing is wrong and cruel. She is a person who believes in right and wrong, and she feels she is clearly wronging Alison and herself by remaining in a relationship with Jimmy. Alison tries to persuade Helena to stay with Jimmy, to not leave him alone. But Helena says that she has made up her mind. She calls to Jimmy, and when he enters again, Helena tells him that she is going to leave him. He barely bats an eye, and Helena leaves.
Alison then apologizes and says she will leave as well. Jimmy berates her for not sending flowers to Hugh’s mother’s funeral. He then explains the bear and the squirrel analogy, and talks about how the bear must go through life by itself, alone, as it is not a social creature by nature. He finally admits to Alison that, though he might indeed be worthless, he thought that if she had truly loved him, this would not have mattered. Alison breaks down and admits that she has lost their child. She says she finally knows where Jimmy is coming from. She had wanted desperately to protect the child inside her and could not. She is now “in the mud,” and knows the humility of existence that Jimmy knows and has always hated her for not knowing. Jimmy embraces her, and they begin their game of bear and squirrel, making loving overtures to one another.
Act III Analysis
The third act reveals a complete role reversal for Helena. As much as she despises Jimmy and implores Alison to get away from him for her health and peace of mind, Helena has now begun an affair with Jimmy, and has taken up Alison’s old role. When the act opens, she is standing at the ironing board and wearing one of Jimmy’s shirts, just like Alison did in the first act. Her acceptance of this role is hard to believe, and when Alison returns a bit later, Helena admits that she perhaps derided Jimmy a bit too harshly for there not to be any feelings involved. Helena’s actions show how transitions between social classes operate—that is, she can move down, but others, such as Jimmy, can hardly ever move upward. The eventual revelation that she does not like Jimmy also underscores this point. Helena is free to leave the working-class world and return to her middle-class status. She offers her the ideas of good and evil, and equates them with modern-day science, but at the end of the day she relies on her belief in right and wrong, a belief she has fostered from her middle-class lifestyle.
Jimmy’s affair shows how incomplete his hatred toward the middle class is, though it also suggests that his hatred might take the form of tarnishing yet another person from its ranks. He admits to Cliff that Helena cannot love him as he wants to be loved. When Helena leaves and Alison returns, he eventually takes Alison back. Their fiery speeches toward one another indicate that they have always loved each other and that now, “in the mud” after having lost their child, they finally understand one another. The critique of sexism, however, is rife within this reconciliation. Alison had to lose her child—a part of herself—just to understand and accept a man’s point of view. She goes back to her abuser with new eyes, the eyes he always wanted her to have, even though it cost their child. Though Jimmy professes love, it is easy to wonder if he will return to his jibes and abusive behavior once feelings have cooled. The play leaves this for the reader to ponder.
The character who seems to make the most progress is Cliff. Cliff finally decides to leave the household and find a wife who can take care of him. He leaves the nest, as it were, and leaves Alison and Jimmy to deal with one another. Based on his earlier remarks about being the reason they are still together, the fact that Cliff decides to leave may indicate that Jimmy and Alison are in fact past the petty attacks on one another and ready to love without hate. Interestingly, the play ends with Jimmy and Alison playing their game of bear and squirrel. In the end, they must rely on imaginary roles to understand one another. The game itself is something Alison likens to their intimacy, when they are truly in love. The game as a symbol of a dream world, however, suggesting that the two are living in a fantasy of their own making.
