What was Priestly’s aim in An Inspector calls?
How Successful was he?
J.B. Priestly was born in1894 and left school at 16 to start writing. Sadly though the war broke out and he had to go and serve in infantry. Serving in the infantry was very risky and as a result many people died. J.B Priestly managed to escape with his life and you could say he was quite lucky. He departed from the army in 1921. He went on to study at Cambridge University and accomplished a degree. Without wasting any time he went on to write his first in 1929and his first play in 1933. He cleverly crafted An Inspector Calls in 1944 but set the play in 1912. His views that have came from the life that he had so far and his political and social ideas come out throughout the play.
Priestly introduce the play with some light ironic humour. He uses events that have occurred in the past that the audience knows about but the characters don’t. He can do this because the play is set approximately 3 decades before it was written. A prime example of this is when Mr Birling is making a big speech to Mr Croft and Eric. Mr Birling says “the Titanic-she sales next week-forty six thousand eight hundred tons…. and every luxury-and unsinkable absolutely unsinkable. The speech would have amused the audience because they knew it had sunk and that Mr Birling sounded so ignorant and stupid. Another thing that makes Mr Birling seem absolutely clueless as to what the future beholds is when he says “…. people say that war is inevitable…. I say-fiddlesticks! The Germans don’t want war,” The audience by now would be laughing at Mr Birling. His ideas about the future could not have been so wrong!
