Pinter's characters live in a time and place when race and national origin matter: after WWII and the end of the imperial age, borders became porous, and citizens of Southeast Asia, India, and Africa made their way to European countries to settle. The result was, unsurprisingly, suspicion and prejudice. Race and national origin were of central importance in order to determine who deserved what from society and the government. Davies manifests the contemporary obsession with the hierarchy of race, denigrating "Poles, Greeks, Blacks, the lot of them, all them aliens," (6) while asserting his own rights. Aston and Mick are not racist like Davies, but still query him about his birthplace and, in Mick's case, tell stories about people's identifying factors like where they live and travel to. Overall, the play evinces the unease of racial tensions in 1950s London.