Arthur Birling is obviously an industrialist, and is always thinking about how to make more money and how to eliminate rivals -“perhaps we may look forward to the time when Croft’s and Birling’s are no longer competing, but working together.” I am given the impression that Mr Birling sees his daughters wedding as a future benefit to his business, rather than him being happy for the couple that are getting married. He considers himself to be a respectable businessman, “I speak as a hard-headed business man. ”
Priestley portrays him as selfish and uncaring; this serves to make Arthur Birling a strong personality, which sets him apart from the other characters.
My first impression of Sybil Birling, Arthur Birling’s wife, is that she tries to keep the peace; to make sure the celebration proceeds smoothly. She criticises some things that other characters quote if she feels it is appropriate. She also comments on the manners of her children. When Eric and Sheila start arguing she tries to calm them down, and remind them how to behave by saying “Now stop it you two.”
Mrs Birling does not, at first, appear to assert herself, and just agrees with what her husband is saying. When Mr Birling notices that his wife, Sybil, has not taken any port he pressures her to have some on what is a special occasion. She agrees instantly without arguing and says, “Very well then, just a little…”
Priestley gives the first impression of Mrs Birling being a weak character that cannot stand up for herself. She does not express her opinions because she fears someone might disagree with her and she is concerned she may be proven wrong.
However later on in the play Mrs Birling’s true personality comes to light, and the audience is to find that she is quite the opposite type of person she is first made out to be. This sudden personality change also makes the play more dramatic, because this new information suddenly changes the audiences’ views on the character, from positive to very negative
Gerald’s first impression to me is that he is always trying to gain peoples favour by agreeing with whatever the other characters are saying to make a good first impression to his fiancées family. He is always agreeing with people, and never questions Mr Birling’s word. There are several examples of Gerald trying to gain Mr Birling’s favour by agreeing with what Mr Birling has to say, “Hear, hear! And I think my father would agree to that,” and “I believe you’re right, sir.”
Gerald also tries to be very polite, but does not seem to mean what he says. When Mr Birling remarks that the dinner was very good, Gerald comments that it was “Absolutely first-class.” J.B. Priestley has put no exclamation mark after Gerald’s quotation, which doesn’t give the comment any sense of meaning or emphasis.
I think that J.B. Priestley was trying to create the typical nervous young man who wants to make a good first impression with his fiancées mother and father. The way he acts and speaks also creates a sense of mystery to his character.
Sheila seems to act in a childish manner, and this stands out. She is always teasing or arguing with someone or trying to stir up an argument. Even Sheila’s mother notices that she is teasing Gerald, and says to her, “Now, Sheila, don’t tease him.” She attempts to stir an argument when she says to Gerald, “Go on Gerald - just you object!” Also she starts an argument with her brother, Eric, and tells him he is drunk, and the argument escalates drastically from this point.
Also she seems to spend a lot of time with her friends. I reach this conclusion because when Sheila exclaims that Eric is ‘squiffy’ Sheila’s mother states, “What an expression, Sheila! Really the things you girls pick up these days.” This suggests to me that Sheila spends a lot of time with her girl friends, and seems to get on better with her friends rather than her family, because she doesn’t seem capable of making a good conversation with her family, and only creates arguments.
Eric does not appear to be a sensible character. I think this because when he is offered alcohol, instead of taking a sensible amount, he goes overboard and takes too much, and gets himself drunk. The effects of alcohol take place as Eric guffaws suddenly. When his sister (Sheila) questions why he did this action, Eric quotes “I don’t know-really. Suddenly I felt I just had to laugh.” This also leads to the conclusion of him being immature, like his sister, and they both clearly do not have a good relationship with each other.
Eric does not do much talking in the first act, and so adds the sense of mystery to his character. I am not sure if this is what J.B. Priestley intended, but this was what I thought he might be trying to do, as it draws the imagination of the audience as they wait for his character to unfold. Mystery to a character is a dramatic technique used by many playwrights.
I think that J.B. Priestley is using these five characters to reflect on the sorts of people that are in society today, including the self-centred businessman, the greedy and nervous boys, the trouble making girls, and the wives that feel trapped because they cannot express their feeling because they are afraid of what other might say.
I believe that these are the five main types of people that Priestley believed to be in modern day society. J.B. Priestley seems to have strong opinions (and to some extent stereotypical views) of society, and he tries to express his views in his play by using the Birling family as a microcosm that represents society.
Act one conveys the scene extremely well to the audience. They get a good insight into the various characters. The author uses many dramatic devices; the main one that J.B. Priestley uses in this part of the play is dramatic irony.
Dramatic irony is a device used by playwrights to emphasise their message to the audience. A character is made to say something that has a different meaning for the audience than it does for the characters involved, the audience is aware of something the character(s) does not know about. Therefore the characters speech has two meanings, one for the audience and one for the character.
As the play was written and performed in 1945, and was set in 1912, it made it easy for J.B. Priestley to use dramatic irony, as the audience would know the future of the world and the events which subsequently unfolded, while obviously the characters could not know this.
Dramatic irony is shown mostly in Mr Birling’s speech starting just after, “I just want to say this. Are you listening Sheila? This concerns you too. And after all I don’t often make speeches at you -” Dramatic Irony is present here because Mr Birling begins to make comments about the future, telling the other characters what he believes will happen in the future. Though in reality the audience realises that his predictions proved to be very different.
Mr Birling then goes on to quote in his speech “…last month, just because the miners came out on strike, there’s a lot of wild talk about possible labour trouble in the near future. Don’t worry. We’ve passed the worst of it. We employers at last are coming together to see that our interests – and the interests of capital – are properly protected. And we’re in for a time of steadily increasing prosperity.” Here we are shown an example of dramatic irony as Mr Birling is predicting the outcome of the strike. However, the audience realize at this point that the actual events were very different, and that it was not the end of labour trouble. In 1926 there was a general strike, and the Trade Union movement was founded.
This was one of four pieces of dramatic irony. Mr Birling also quoted that, “The Germans don’t want war. Nobody wants war, except some half-civilised folk in the Balkans.” Of course Mr Birling had made his second wrong prediction, as in two years time from when Arthur Birling said that, war broke out (start of World War One).
The third is the best piece of dramatic irony used, in my opinion. Mr Birling states that “…the Titanic - she sails next week – forty-six thousand eight hundred tonnes – New York in five days – and every luxury – and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable.” I think this is one of the most effective pieces of dramatic irony because as the sinking of the Titanic is known throughout generations. All of the characters believe that the ship is unsinkable, though the audience knows that it is not unsinkable, therefore it has two different meanings, one for the characters and one for the audience.
Mr Birling is also very stereotypical. This shows when he says that “There’ll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere – except of course Russia, which will be behindhand naturally.” This proves that Mr Birling has a stereotypical view towards Russia, as he thinks that Russia will also be behind in the industrial world. This quotation is also dramatic irony. This is because the characters think that Russia will always be behind in progressing, but in a year’s time there is the Russian revolution, which resulted in Russia being one of the five leading powerful countries in the era of World War One.
In Classical Greek drama, it was extremely important to use the ‘Three Unities’. The Three Unities is another dramatic technique used by the author. This device is used to give the play a sense of realism.
The first Unity was to use the same location of action (the unity of place), which allows the audience to concentrate fully on the characters and their dialogue; there is no distraction with changing scenery and props.
The Unity of time is also used in ‘an inspector calls’. This is when stage time and real time are identical. This makes the play easier to follow for the audience. If various time scales were used, it would detract from the flow of the play.
The Unity of action is an important factor to keep the play ‘real’. This means that there is only one plot; and no sub-plots, like that are used in Shakespeare. The attention of the audience is therefore not diverted to various smaller plots taking place.
These techniques are employed by Priestley to give the play naturalism and to make it credible for the audience.
J.B. Priestley also uses people’s emotions to make the scene more dramatic. He does this just before Sheila receives the ring from Gerald. Sheila lets out her feelings and exclaims “You be careful - or I’ll start weeping.” Emotions make plays more dramatic when they are least expected or when these emotions are passed from the characters to the audience. J.B. Priestley then builds on this quotation, by using what Gerald does and says afterwards.
“Well, perhaps this will help to stop it.” says Gerald as he produces a ring case. This action suddenly changes emotional feeling, when it was least expected. An emotion change from weeping, to excitement, changes the whole atmosphere around the characters, and the audience.
J.B. Priestley introduces more dramatic speech into his play through, again, Mr Birling. Mr Birling tries to make himself look better by introducing the following statement, “- there’s a fair chance that I might find my way into the next Honours List. Just a knighthood, of course.” This is dramatic because Mr Birling is making such a large assumption, and is saying this without any concrete evidence. Mr Birling has been led to think that he is to get a knighthood just because of a hint or two. I think this is dramatic because Mr Birling believes himself worthy of a knighthood. However, at the start of the play he is portrayed as an unlikeable character, and so the audience will think that he does not deserve a knighthood, because of the things he says, and his opinions.
The two reasons Mr Birling thinks he is going to get a knighthood are “I was Lord Mayor here two years ago when Royalty visited us” and “I’ve always been regarded as a sound useful party man.” This shows Mr Birling’s opinion of himself, a sound useful party man, and assumes this is what others think of him. The audience, however, have been made to think differently, by his actions and words earlier in the scene.
At the end of the scene Mr Birling starts lecturing Gerald and Eric. He starts expressing his negative views on community and society, “- community and all that nonsense.” and “- a man has to look after himself…”. When he is in the middle of a sentence, just after these quotations, the doorbell rings. I think J.B. Priestley did this on purpose to help express some more of his belief of community and everyone helping and protecting each other.
The doorbell ringing stops Mr Birling from saying anything else negative about community. This is dramatic because this is when people would least expect Arthur Birling to be interrupted. The audience would start thinking why the doorbell has rung, and who rung it. It is also a part where J.B. Priestley hides his message in the story, which is that people should all be helping each other, to live in a community.
The audience then learns that a police inspector has rung the door and is waiting to speak to Mr Birling. When the maid, Edna, tells Mr Birling he replies “An inspector? What kind of inspector?” This is the first sign that Mr Birling is starting to worry, as he has just quoted that “so long as we behave ourselves, don’t get into a police court or start a scandal.” He is thinking that he or his family might be in trouble with the law, and is worried because if this is true it may ruin his chances of receiving a knighthood. He is trying to hide (unsuccessfully) that he is frightened, which makes the end of the scene very dramatic, and helps to lead on to the next scene of the play.
J.B. Priestley’s use of dramatic devices is most concentrated in this scene, though he uses them throughout the play. This has made his play very successful, and enjoyable to read and watch, even though the message behind the story is a serious one.
