Birling is the type of character the entire play warns against, ‘a hard-headed business man’ he believes that society is as it ought to be. The rich should remain rich and the poor should remain poor, there is an immense gap between the two classes. He is a typical family man and is very opinionated and ‘rather portentous’ which means that he believes he is significant to society.Birling makes numerous long speeches which shows that he is self confident and constantly believes he knows best. He also believes that a ‘man has a mind his own business and look after himself and his own’ however Eva was trying to make her own way and he prevented this. When the audience reviews everything Birling has predicted and said in the play, the audience recognise that Priestly and Birling’s views are dissimilar.Birling’s confidence in the predictions he makes, that the Titanic is ‘unsinkable,absoulotely unsinkable’, that ‘the Germans don’t want a war. Nobody wants a war’ and that ‘we’re in for a time of increasing prosperity’ give the audience the impression that his views of the community and shared responsibility are also false. Every one of the predictions Birling makes is incorrect; the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage, WW1 broke out two years later after the play was set and the American stock market crashed in 1929, plunging the world into economic chaos. This leads the audience to think Birling as a man of many words but little sense and because of this the audience doesn’t trust Birling throughout the play.
Birling refers to Eva in a patronising way ‘country-bred girl’ and ‘good little worker’ are examples of this. The way in which Birling answers the questions ‘slowly’ and uninformative makes the audience assume that Birling knows the treatment of the workers is unjust but it is just too late to change his views.
The Inspector affects all the Birling’s at the dinner party, and makes them realise their weaknesses and selfishness, and of the terrible consequences that their actions caused. Where Birling’s predictions are wrong, the Inspector predicts that if people don’t learn their responsibilities and don’t get their priorities correct then they will be ‘taught in fire and blood and anguish’ which makes the audience believe that if people don’t take responsibility in the first place they will suffer a great deal more.Birling and the Inspector are two completely different characters so the Inspector is a threat to Birling. Birling doesn’t really care about Eva; he only cares about himself and his family. Even when the Inspector is discussing a severe matter with him Birling is more interested in making the Inspector know how superior he is ‘I was an Alderman for years and Lord Mayor two years ago and I’m still on the bench’. Birling believed that his status in society can get him out of any problems he or the family are involved in and so Birling attempts to use his status and power to influence the Inspector with his judgements.
The Inspector objects to the way that Birling has treated his workers, particulary because he refused to increase the workers pay by a minute amount.Birling is a rich man and only seems to care about his family and how well his business is progressing, in other words how much money he is earning. He had no care for any of his workers, and didn’t know them at all ‘I have a couple of hundred workers under me, who keep changing’. This also means that he didn’t care who he employed as long as he could pay them low wages. Even though Birling claims that Eva was a ‘good worker’, he still dismissed her and the fact that he also only pays them little demonstrates this. The workers were averaging ‘twenty-two and six’ and requested their wages be increased to ‘twenty-five shillings a week’ but Birling refused and claimed that the workers wages was ‘neither more nor less’ than what is paid generally in Birling’s industry.Birling claimed that ‘it’s a free country’ and that they could ‘go elsewhere if they didn’t like it’ but for the workers it was a strenuous just living without having the excess trouble of looking for work again.
Birling’s views on labour costs is to keep them to a minimum, he achieves this by maintaining the workers wages appallingly low.Birling believes he couldn’t increase Eva’s wages because he would have been adding ‘about twelve percent’ to his labour costs. The Birling’s and Croft’s companies were also to be united to form a large successive company which will occur in the future when Sheila and Gerald marry, which will also help maintain his low labour costs to a minimum. However pleasant Birling is to Gerald, Birling makes it certain that Gerald knows of his knighthood in an attempt at securing his position in the eyes of his rivals, the Crofts.Birling is extremely proud of his daughters and Gerald’s marriage ‘just the king of son-in-law I always wanted’. He only believes this because Gerald will be useful to him in his business exploits.Birling isn’t particularly worried about the workers on strike and he sees the strike as a ‘pitiful affair’ because he knows they will have to return to work again for them to be able to survive and after a while they were all begging him to return anyway because they were becoming poorer, so Birling let the workers return but fired the ‘ringleaders’, one of whom, Eva Smith.
The Inspector isn’t intimidated by Birling which is peculiar because most of Birling’s family is intimidated by him. When compared, Sheila and her father have quite different views. Whereas Sheila accepts responsibility for her actions, Birling doesn’t and attempts to blame Eva’s situation on others. The audience believes Sheila emulates Priestly in a way, as she believes that everybody should be heard and has equal rights. When Sheila attempts to speak and put her views forward Birling refuses and claims that she ‘is tired’ so she will not participate in the conversation.
Eric also accepts responsibly unlike his father. Eric shows sympathy for Eva and when he heard she had lost her job in Birling’s factory. While Gerald says that ‘Birling couldn’t have done anything else’, Eric bluntly says ‘he could, he could have kept her on instead of throwing her out’.Birling and Eric’ personalities differ because whereas when Birling had to work hard to get power in society, Eric automatically acquired it when he was born into the Birling family, and therefore is not a ‘self-made man’.
Birling feels threatened by the Inspector because the Inspector is quick and witty whilst answering and asking questions and isn’t intimidated by Birling because of his reputation.Birling resents being challenged by the Inspector and especially resents the suggestion that he just uses girls for ‘cheap labour’.Birling also dislikes the Inspector because Birling believes that if anyone discovers the events it will result in him not being knighted. Birling becomes very ‘inpatient’ with the Inspector because the Inspector is attempting to disclose the events.Birling doesn’t like anyone attempting to establish something that he denies to have done to be correct. He is also becoming irritated because Birling is afraid that he will be embarrassed in front of his family is the Inspector discovers anything.
The body language in the play between Birling and the Inspector informs us of their characters and their reactions in horrific situations.Birling’s body language reflects his emotions and he therefore acts ‘impressively’ in attempting to make the Inspector feel threatened. The Inspector uses body language to create dramatic tension in the play, ‘holds up hand’; this shows he is suddenly taking control which creates tension because the Birling’s are mystified by his actions.
The Inspector acts as the Birling’s consciences. The audience is made aware that there are those in higher classes in society who have a great deal of power and abuse it. They take advantage of those weaker than themselves. The play makes us ware that the workers in 1912 were treated poor, harsh and incorrect and some of the higher class couldn’t care less about them. Priestly wanted to show that this will continue to occur if the society doesn’t learn from their mistakes. Between the years 1912-1945 the society has seen what happens to an uncaring society. The country experienced World Wars, Depressions and many more disasters. This emphasises how important it is that the society is concerned for each other and helps those weaker than themselves rather than just being concerned with themselves and those of the same class.
The audience is intended to fell that they can and will make a difference by treating everybody equal. Priestly hoped that the audience would also agree with his socialist views and disagree with Birling’s capitalist views. Priestly highlights the difficulties of workers as this time in the play and through the death of Eva Priestly is showing that capitalists cares more about profit and money than they care about each other. This also shows how those of the higher class would rather lose a ‘good worker’ than help them if it meant that their labour costs increased, this is shown by Birling dismissing Eva.
Luckily the society did take notice of the consequences of an egocentric society and began taking other views into consideration and people started to be treated equally and there were organisations being set up to help those less fortunate such as the National Health Service (NHS) which offered free medical care to anyone.
