deep childhood trauma Many families after the war had to live with slow deaths and long suffering so Jimmy s pain reflects a wider social reality Because of this experience he believes real suffering gives meaning to life He despises the comfortable middle class who never truly experienced hardship His anger is not only about the present it grows from the wounds of his childhood Lost Ideals of the Past Jimmy also adheres to old ideals like patriotism bravery and struggle He feels these noble values are gone in modern Britain In Act I he says I suppose people like me aren t supposed to be very patriotic This shows his disappointment Like previous generations who had no reason to fight Jimmy feels there is nothing left to believe in He cannot accept the dull empty society around him His heart is still tied to the heroic ideals of the past which no longer exist Failure in Present Relationships Jimmy s marriage with Alison also suffers because he is stuck in old anger Instead of building a hopeful future with her he keeps bringing up class differences and old grudges Alison herself admits in Act II Some people do actually marry for revenge This line reveals that their marriage was influenced by past conflicts between classes Jimmy cannot forget these class divisions so he turns his marriage into a battlefield His obsession with the past blocks any chance of peace in the present His Sarcasm About Life Jimmy constantly complains that life has no meaning in the present He uses sarcasm to show his frustration In Act I he says Let s pretend that we re human beings and that we re actually alive This statement proves that he feels lifeless in modern society He longs for an exciting past where people had real struggles His words show that he sees the present as empty compared to the past The Generation Gap Jimmy s obsession with the past He also creates conflict with Alison s father Colonel Redfern who himself mourns the old times Alison explains the difference between them in Act II You re hurt because everything is changed Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same This means Colonel Redfern feels pain because the world has moved on while Jimmy feels pain because nothing really changes for people like him Both men are stuck in the past unable to accept reality In short in Look Back in Anger Jimmy Porter is clearly more obsessed with the past than concerned about the future His childhood trauma his lost ideals his unhappy marriage and his sarcasm all come from looking backward Osborne shows him as a man trapped in old wounds unable to find peace or hope in the life ahead