Mr. Birling's reactions to the Inspector is to see him as a threat to his afmily and their way of life and he becomes defensive and tries to limit any damage that might be done to them by their links with the death of Eva Smith. He emerges from the Inspector's visit hardly changed, ...
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Mr. Birling's reactions to the Inspector is to see him as a threat to his afmily and their way of life and he becomes defensive and tries to limit any damage that might be done to them by their links with the death of Eva Smith. He emerges from the Inspector's visit hardly changed, but the final telephone call leaves him threatened again and we wonder if in the end even he will be changed and begin to question his attitudes.
Mrs. Birling, like her husband, is defensive of her family. She can not cope with the idea that she may have played any part in the death of Eva and she sticks to her claim that she was only doing her duty. When the Inspector leaves she turns on the others and accuses them of being weak in front of the Inspector. She, too, seems unchanged by his visit.
Sheila does seem likely to have been chnged by the visit. She reacts more honestly to his questions and also questions her and her families role in Eva's death. She wants to know what the truth is. She compares herself to Eva.
Hi. You could argue that Eva Smith is responsible for her own actions and that she is not a victim at all. She chose to go on strike, to have affairs with Eric and Gerald, to go to Mrs. Birling's committee for help. She could have chosen to handle things differently. But this is not what the play argues - it says that Eva Smith is a victim of the greed and selfishness of the Birling family.
Obviously, some of the characters accept their responsibility easier than others eg. Sheila Birling and Eric; others may not accept it at all eg. Mrs. Birling and Mr. Birling; and then there's Gerald who seems very much to "sit on the fence" so to speak.
Where I would start and finish with this question would be with the Inspector and the reason for his "call". He has come to try and make them see that their actions affect others, that they can not just ignore the little people who work for them or who serve them in shops or who satisfy their sexual needs. People, all people, count. Look at the conversation which the Inspector cuts in to when he makes his first appearance in the play. It is no coincidence that he interrupts Mr. Birling's "it's every man for himself" speech. Contrast this with the Inspector's final speech in the play - it's the opposite, isn't it?
Then, I would go through each of the characters and explain the part they played in Eva Smith's/Daisy Renton's life - whether I felt they had learnt anything, whether I felt they would behave differently next time. I would be really careful at this point not to allow my answer to get too "listy" and repetitive and I would make sure I brought in lots of quotations to illustrate the points I was making.
I would round off by reiterating my beginning - we are all to blame for the death of Eva Smith, when we act in the same way as the Birling family. Eva Smith could have been lots of different people and not just one; it doesn't matter whether she was or not. We should never treat people badly.
Priestley set his play in the North of England because this was the focus and centre of the industrial expansion of the period. This was the 'dark satanic mills' land of industrial progress. He set it just before the war so that his audience would have known that in fact a war was coming when Mr Birling who is so full of his own importance is so sure there won't be one. It was also a time when the trade unions and the working class were just getting started and beginning to try to improve the lot of working people.
