'An Inspector Calls'.

Authors Avatar

Raphael Ibrahim 10TS                              23rd October 2003                

English Coursework: ‘ An Inspector Calls’

              John Boyton Priestly was born on 13th September 1894 in Bradford, Yorkshire. Priestly decided to leave school at sixteen rather then work toward a university scholarship. ‘I wanted to write’ he says in his autobiography. He believed ‘the world outside of classrooms’ would make him a better writer, and he felt that he ‘must spend at least the next few years trying his hand at it’.   

             It was during the period before World War One, that Preistly acquired and developed the skills that would make him an exceptional writer. Priestly says himself that the years 1911-1914 ‘set their stamp on me’. A possible reason for this is because he worked as a junior clerk at a wool company and was witness to some of the prejudice that the lower workers had to endure. This may have given him his socialist views, which would mould the way he thought and thus influencing him to write such plays as ‘An Inspector Calls’ in 1945.

              Another source of influence for Priestly was his father, who was also a socialist meaning he believed in social equality. As    Priestly grew up, he found himself spending time with people who read a great deal, cared a lot for at least one of the arts and preferred real talk….hot argument to social chit-chat. But there weren’t any professional writers in this new group, Priestly, who grew up among his fathers group of socialist friends, now found himself joining in with their political arguments. However, Priestly said ‘ I was politically minded to some extent’ however he was ‘never able to put politics first’.

              Priestly became a socialist man, meaning he believed in equality and fairness, something that was rare in most years of his life. Through his plays he tried to influence people into his way of thinking. He knew that the people who were in positions of power, from the Conservative party member to the Middle-Class factory owner, were only concerned with looking after themselves and were quite happy to over-look the poverty, inequality and injustice which tainted the lives of people less fortunate than them.

               The outbreak of war meant that when Priestly was 20, he joined the Armed Services as an Infantry Man. At 25 (1919), Priestly left the army. During his time in the war he had been in active front-line service in France and had nearly been killed when a German bomb exploded at two or three yards away from him. He had also been the subject of a gas attack. Priestly says, I was lucky in war and have never ceased to be aware of that’. I believe that coming so close to death and narrowly escaping with his life gave him confidence and the belief that he was meant to be alive, in retrospect we know his writing was to influence the way Britain was at the time.

              Common themes in Priestly plays were that the audience was shown possible projections of their actions in contrast to their present conditions at the time. Another recurring theme is responsibility, individual and collective, for those actions and their subsequent reactions. He wanted people to be aware that they need to be responsible for their actions and accountable for them. Priestly wrote ‘An Inspector Calls’ in 1945.

              A particularly important year for Priestly was in 19777 when Queen Elizabeth II made him a member of the Order of Merit, which was a great honour for him. In 1984 Priestly dies at the age of 89.

             During the time in which an inspector calls is set (1912) there was a class system in Britain. ‘Lower class’- foremen, hand-crafters, day labourers, domestic servants. ‘Lower-Middle class’-shopkeepers, small tradesmen. ‘Diversified Middle class’- moderately successful industrialists, merchants, professionals, doctors, lawyers. ‘Upper Middle class’- banking, industry, large-scale commercialists, politicians. ‘Upper Class’- mostly royalty, inherited wealth.

             Conditions for factory workers were disgraceful. There were no Health and safety rules or regulations. If they became ill, they wouldn’t get pay. During the industrial revolution, thousands of factories were built. However there were not enough jobs for the numbers of people that wanted work, this meant that factory owners could take advantages of workers by paying them low wages and treating them unfairly because they didn’t have to look to hard to find a replacement should they decide to leave.

             Wide-scale strikes for better pay and conditions were occurring regularly, the majority of strikes were between 1904 and 1926. Eva Smith went on strike when her claim for a pay rise was rejected. At one point, 2.2 million people were unemployed in 1926, which contributed to the ‘General Strike, the largest strike ever conducted by the relatively new trade unions.  This forced middle class factory owners to treat working call people better by giving them more pay and Health and Safety standards. However this was a long way away from 1912.

Join now!

             The conservative party, who were in power, where only concerned with the rights and needs of the Upper-Class and Middle-Class citizens, whereas the labour party (who were gaining support and strength) were socialists, so they wanted to improve workers rights and try to improve the poverty. The introduction of the welfare state in 1945 was a milestone in the treatment of lower class people. They got unemployment benefits, minimum wage, free health service and generally a better standard of living. But, this was of little use to the likes of Eva Smith in 1912.

...

This is a preview of the whole essay