What is Priestley's main aim in ' An Inspector Calls' and how successfully does he achieve it?

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An inspector calls

What is Priestley main aim in ' An Inspector Calls' and how successfully does he achieve it?

J.b. Priestley wrote 'An inspector calls' in 1943 on a play based in 1912. He was born in Bradford Yorkshire on 13th sept 1894 and died in 1984. He left school at sixteen because he wanted to write and takes a job with a firm of wool merchants. Priestley used his knowledge in working in the local wool to present Eva Smith and the working class people

His father’s friends were mainly socialist and he joined in with their political arguments. He used his socialist views in the play. He joined the army in 1914 and uses his knowledge he had in the war to portray the character of Mr Birling. Priestley's aim is to educate the audience through the characters and their individual responsibility towards other people.

Arthur Birling is the kind of character who is concerned with money. 'A hard-headed business man', he believes that society is as it should be. The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor and there is a large gap between the two. He believes that 'a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own'. When put with other things Birling has said in the play, we see that Priestley's views do not concur with Birling's and he has added statements to make the audience see Birling's views as false. Birling's confidence in the predictions he makes - that the Titanic is 'unsinkable, absolutely 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 that audience the impression that his views of community and shared responsibility are misguided also. Every one of the predictions Birling makes are wrong; the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage, World War one broke out two years after the play was set and the American stock market crashed in 1929, plunging the world into economic chaos. This leads us to regard Mr Birling as an arrogant and shortsighted man.

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If we contrast the character of Birling with that of the Inspector, we can see Priestley’s aims showing. The Inspector is the opposite of Birling. Where Birling's predictions are wrong, the Inspector predicts that if people don't learn their responsibilities, they will be taught in 'fire and blood and anguish'. This prediction refers to World War 1. The lessons of World War I weren't learnt so the same mistakes were made and another war started. Though Priestly was unaware of it when the play was written, sixty years on the same mistakes have caused war after war. Another contrast to ...

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