Jimmy Porter is the angry young man of the post war
generation. He is violent and unpleasant like Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams'
A Streetcar named ,Desire. He uses foul and dirty languages like a
lumpen. His words about his wife and mother-in-law are horribly distasteful.Had there
been no buffer character like Cliff, Alison might have been killed for her passivity.
He is a sexual maniac, but does not love his wife. He hates her for her class. A totally
frustrated man, Jimmy always suffers from a sense of inferiority to his wife. She looks
at her as if she were a hostage. Jimmy's bear and squirrel game with his wife shows that
he lacks real human feeling himself although he curses his wife for passivity. Jimmy is
notorious for his domestic violence. He makes love to Helena while his pregnant wife
suffers all sorts of mental anguish and goes away from home. When she comes back to
Jimmy after the abortion, she falls almost prostrate. Jimmy is cynical and lacks the
pleasant nature of a revolutionary who discards the old and hopes for the new. He is
neither a revolutionary nor an ordinary man . He does not understand homely happiness.
Nor can he adjust with the outside world. He is aggressive, frustrated and a defeated
man. Osborne presents Jimmy as an angry and unpleasant character with whom a wife like
Alison can at best make a temporary compromise for living under one roof and a friend
like Cliff bear the taunts and insults only for giving him
company.
Dr.Ratan Bhattacharjee, Chairperson , Post
Graduate Dept.of English
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