Jimmy Porter feels alienated from both his wife and society in general. He is a struggling middle class working man who is bored and confined by his monotonous life. His wife Alison has come to accept life, silently bearing any and all burdens.
Jimmy feels resentful of Alison's aloofness and indifferent demeanor and strikes out at her to get a reaction.
Jimmy is an angry man who feels that his opportunities in life were shaped by his middle class upbringing. Alison's brother Nigel has a university degree and is a member of Parliament. Jimmy hates him for his connection to the world. A connection that he knows that he will never have.
Jimmy is a character who contemplates the world beyond the dimensions of his own existence. He cannot find anyone to talk to about the injustices or curiosities he feels about life.
Part of Jimmy's alienation is from a general feeling in Great Britain in the 1950s when the ordinary British citizen felt passed over by a government who had promised prosperity for everyone. Instead, following WWII, in which London was destroyed, the British people struggle with new threats and a country put back together with a socialist system in place that is designed to keep everyone equal, except the very rich who remain the upper class, high above the ordinary citizen. Jimmy resents all of this and knows that it will never change.
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