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
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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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 after himself - and his family, too, of course… you’d think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive- community and all that nonsense’. This shows Mr. Birling does not believe in socialism and that he is convinces that communism is right because he learnt in a hard school of experience that a man has to mind his own business and look after himself. Mr. Birling only cares about his status in the community and blames someone else, ‘You’re the one I blame for this (angrily staring at Eric)...There’ll be a public scandal’ Mr. Birling still does not understand that all of them were partly to blame. This shows that Birling is terrified that his status, in the community, might go down and does not care about the community he is in. Also Mr. Birling is angry that he might not get the Knighthood that he has always wanted. This shows that Mr. Birling cares more about his status, and the pride he will get, than his community that he lives in as well as his friends. Shelia, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Birling is next responsible for Eva Smith’s atrocious death. First of all, she got Eva Smith sacked from Milwards a famous shop that the Birling visits often, ‘I was in a furious temper’. This action was made without thinking about it and she was in so much fury she was not prepared to think about it. Shelia starts to realise that she’d made Eva Smith life a horror. This was really only Eva Smith’s second job and when she was sacked she did not have much left so she swallowed disinfectant and died. Sheila also said, ‘I told him (the manager at Milwards) that if they didn’t get rid of that girl (Eva Smith), I’d never go near the place again and I’d persuade mother to close our account with them’. This shows that Sheila is a spoilt child and she always gets what she wants. She does think what could happen to Eva Smith in the future. Also, Sheila is very forceful and insists on everything being her way, ‘It was an idea of my own – mother had been against it, but I had insisted.’ This shows how self-centred Sheila. She also did not want the dress without thinking why she did not want it; this was all because of a very bad mood she was in. If she had listened to her mother or the assistant manager, then Eva Smith will still be working in Milwards. When Sheila realise what she has done, ‘(She almost breaks down)... How could I know what would happen afterwards?’ This shows Sheila does not think about what she does properly. Sheila shows her feelings as being upset because of her vulnerable conscience. This shows how truthful the inspector is when he and Mr. Birling say Mr. Birling: ‘You seem to have made a great impression on this child’, Inspector: ‘...We often do on the young ones. They’re more impressionable.’ Afterwards, Shelia thinks that at the time she thought it was the right thing to do, ‘Yes, but it didn’t seem to be anything very terrible at the time’. This shows that Shelia makes up her mind without really thinking about what she is doing and capitalises on the power she has, by sacking Eva Smith, a very spoilt child. Shelia also thinks to herself how dim-witted it was when she was speaking to Eric, Eric: ‘My God, it’s a bit thick, when you come to think of it… I know, I know. It’s the only time I’ve ever done anything like that, and I’ll never, never do it again to anybody’. She realises that she was dim-witted and she hopes she will not do it again. As soon as the Inspector is finished with Sheila he turns to Gerald. Gerald is the next person to be questioned by the Inspector. After the inspector Goole finishes with Sheila he mentions that she changed her name to Daisy Renton. Gerald recognises her immediately and this gives it away that he knew a Daisy Renton: ‘(startled) what?’ This shows that he never knew anything about Eva Smith but he knew a Daisy Renton. Then Sheila notices that he know her and asks Gerald, Shelia: ‘Well, Gerald? (Trying to smile) How did you come to know this girl Daisy Renton…you gave yourself away as soon as he mentioned her other name.’ Eric ‘then all right I knew her. Let’s leave it at that’. This quote conveys that Gerald does not succeed to bury his secret from Sheila, that he knew a Daisy Renton. Sheila understands that Gerald was with Daisy Renton in the spring when he was too busy in the works (Croft ltd) to see her. Then the Inspector comes in and he ask Gerald and he tells the true story he says: ‘I met her sometime in March last year, in the stalls bar at the palace...It’s a favourite place for the women of the town’ This is when he meets Daisy Renton and he takes her out of there to the County Hotel. They talked and soon Gerald realises how pretty she was and he decided to keep her as his mistress in one of his friend’s rooms. He said he did it only because he ‘was sorry for her to see her without any money’. This conveys Gerald’s passion for her and that he did not want to put her down, living on the roads. She had no place to stay so Gerald gave her some money that will last to the end of the year. Mrs. Birling is the next to be inspected she passes the blames onto the young father, ‘First the girl herself...Secondly, I blame the young man who was the father of the child she was going to have’. ‘He’d be entirely responsible... certainly. And he ought to be dealt with very severely.’ These quotes show that Mrs. Birling passes the blame onto the father of the child and she was too self-centred to realise that there was the possibility that it could be her fault. And only when the inspector says he is waiting to do the duty that Mrs. Birling realises, that she had set something terrible up for Eric. The last person to be inspected was Eric. When the Inspector is finished he says that he is waiting for someone the Birling family look around and notice that he is waiting for Eric. Firstly the family don not believe that Eric was the one apart from Sheila. Eric enter and he says that he kept seeing her until she said she didn’t want to see him anymore because he said that the money he gave to her was stolen even though he tried to help her by giving her some money, ‘she’d no money left so I insisted on giving her enough money to keep her going until she refused to take any more’ she realised that it was stolen and did not take any more. Mr. Birling anxiously asked where he got the money from and when Eric replied he was furious, he makes sure that Eric pays him back for all the money he stole out of Mr. Birling’s office. This shows that he had passion for her and was trying to help her to live on. Priestley’s aim is to convey that everybody’s actions and decisions in life cannot only affect themselves but it can also affect other people as well. Priestley aim is to convey his play in a biased way to show why caring for other people is good and why people are wrong to always think about themselves. He makes Gerald a man who cares for everyone, even the poor hence he was passionate for Eva Smith/Daisy Renton. Priestley makes everyone else hate her and unfortunately make her die. Also Priestley has made Mr. Birling ignorant and after he finds out that the Inspector is fake he carries life like normal same with Mrs. Birling and Gerald. However Sheila and Eric feel awful that they cannot change their way and hope that they will not do this to anyone else.