How Does J.B Priestley Use Dramatic Devices to Convey His Concerns and Ideas to the Audience as Well as Interest and Involve Them in His Play?

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Laurence Andrews

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How Does J.B Priestley Use Dramatic Devices to Convey

His Concerns and Ideas to the Audience as Well as

Interest and Involve Them in His Play? – Essay

      J.B Priestley was born in Yorkshire, 1894. He was very concerned with the effect of an individual’s morals, actions over time, and their responsibility to others, possibly due to his time spent witnessing suffering during his time in the army, after leaving home at 16. Priestley uses the context of the build up to World War One, where lack of community and middle class responsibility in the face of strikes and food shortages led to political unrest as a contrast to the present. This essay looks at dramatic devices used to convey this theme while involving the audience in his play.

      Priestley wrote the play in post-war 1945, where similar problems were emerging to those experienced in Edwardian England. He uses the earlier setting where social problems failed to be addressed, to warn people that if further political unrest was to be avoided a different approach i.e. socialism should be considered. As a politically left wing socialist, Priestley realised that to highlight his message, that right wing capitalists were generally morally questionable, he could give his characters relatively stereotypical personalities. This made it much easier to show the large gap between the rich and poor, greedy and selfless and bad and good. Not only does this idea help to put his concerns across to the audience more forcefully, it makes for a more interesting, humorous, and easy-to-follow script.

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      The family is shown to wealthy by the description of their surroundings and manners, but their relationship is distant. For instance, when the father is in trouble, he says of the rest of his family, “Unlike the other three, I did nothing that I am ashamed of. I consider that I did my duty” Not only is this disloyal to his family, but in mentioning his duty of firing a disruptive employee, he shows the audience that he puts his duties towards his business above his family and community. He implies that the success of his ...

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