Inspector Calls

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Mr. Champion                                                                                       Adriean Thevarajan 10R                                    An Inspector Calls Coursework‘An Inspector Calls’ by J.B.Priestley is a play first performed in 1946. This play takes place on a single night, in 1912 and is about the Birling family who live in a town called Brumley who are visited by an inspector late at night. Inspector Goole, questions the family about the suicide of a young woman called Eva Smith. As the night progresses, each member of the Birling family finds out that each of them are responsible for the young girl’s death.       Priestley’s aim in ‘An Inspector Calls’ is to show how everybody’s actions and decisions in life cannot only affect themselves but it can also affect other people as well. ‘We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.’ This is Priestley’s aim and he has done this because he was a socialist and he wanted to show the audiences why socialism is essential in the world, socialist believe that everyone should be treated equally.       Mr. Birling is the first person to be questioned by the Inspector. Soon Mr. Birling remembers the girl and she used to work in Mr. Birling works, ‘She’d been working in one of our machine shops for a year...They wanted the rates raised so that they could average about twenty-five shillings a week. I refused of course’ ‘it’s my duty to keep the labour costs down’. This shows that Mr. Birling only thinks of how he can get more money and does not think about the working class; it also shows his ignorance to paying the littlest bit more money to workers, and when the inspector finishes and Birling finds out he is partly responsible he offers money to the inspector, ‘Look, Inspector – I’d give thousands, yes
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thousands...You’re offering the money at the wrong time.’ These quotes show how selfish Mr. Birling is and shows how much he is willing to pay to keep this quite for his knighthood on the next honours list.       Mr. Birling refuses to raise the rates and when the strike finishes he gets rid of the workers who started the strike. Mr. Birling gets rid of Eva Smith who was one of the ring-leaders. He does not care about anyone but himself he is a communist only thinks about himself. ‘A man has to make his own way - has to look ...

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