J.B. Priestley’s Ideal World
‘An Inspector calls’ is a play, set in 1912, which works on many
different levels. On the surface it is a play about an inspection in
to the suicide of a girl called Eva Smith and how everyone in the play
is involved in the down fall of this girl. However, if you look deeper
into the play there is another meaning. It is about the characters
having an inspection of their consciences. If you look deeper still,
it is a play is not only about Eva Smith alone but about all the
people that get hurt by other people’s actions. It is about how people
abuse their power, status and use their money to achieve what they
want and do not think or care about the consequences of their actions.
It gives us an idea about what Priestley’s ideal world would be and
how we should and shouldn’t act, by showing the mistakes that the
characters make.
Priestley makes it very clear that he doesn’t like the way that the
characters abuse their power and status. Mr Birling abuses his power
because although he could have given a pay rise to Eva Smith and the
other girls he decided not to. He says ‘They wanted the rates raised
to twenty shillings a week. I refused, of course.’ This shows that
although it was in his power to give the girls a raise and make their
lives easier he decided that they had enough already. He then goes on
to sack the girls who came to him asking for the raise, saying ‘she’d
had a lot to say – far too much – so she had to go.’ Again he abuses
his power because he decides that she had spoken out so he was going
to discharge her. Although Eva Smith had done nothing wrong, Mr
Birling decided that he would prove...
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...s that people make Priestley shows
these faults through the mistakes that the characters make. Many of
the faults are to do with abuse of power, money, status and people.
All of the mistakes that the characters make have a significant effect
on the victim of their actions, whether or not Eva Smith is one person
or lots of people. In Priestley’s ideal world no one would abuse their
power money or status; no one would be prejudiced or look down on
other. People would think about the consequences of their actions and
would avoid doing anything that hurt another person. However, I do not
believe Priestley’s ideal world will ever by reality and it certainly
is not today as people are still hurting other people and people are
still making the same mistakes as Arthur, Sybil, Shelia, Eric and
Gerald made in An Inspector calls.
the play. It looks at the person he is and the person he becomes. It
The play shows how Eva Smith is a victim of the attitude of society in
unkown to the rest of the town intill the end of the play. And because of her
The play was written in the 1945 but is set in 1912. The 1910's was a
the main theme of the play. With out this scene in the play I don’t
...le for them throughout the play, and it came to a head at the end of their lives. This play highlights the importance of identity, by showing what happens without it. Without your identity, you will pass through life with no purpose, until you stopped living.
about hate as it is about love and the morals of society. The play is
meanings along with what is going on in the plot of the play, it is
play we get to see how all of these people added to Eva Smith's misery
The time this play took place in was in modern time, during the twenty-first century.
The quest for the ideal is a phenomenon that many people attempt to achieve. As we all know, the quest for the ideal is difficult and complicated by personal experience. The poems, “The Story” by Karen Connelly and the “The Love Song of J.Aflred Prufrock”, by T.S Elliot, as well as the essay “Kant’s Beauty and the Sublime” by Maureen Rousseau explore the peril inherent in the quest for the ideal, which is that in our search for beauty we risk encountering the sublime. The danger of the sublime is that we cannot comprehend the magnitude of the realms of things that are sublime. We ask ourselves why someone would want to risk encountering the sublime. Well, with great risk comes great reward and that is the beauty we seek.
This play put on by SI tells the story of a young teenager named Alice trying to figure out her life. After she was raped by a popular kid at school, there was no one she could talk to and figure out what to do. Her parents, the typical very religious family was obviously against having an abortion, something Alice wanted to have but didn’t know how to ask her parents. To gauge there response, she asked them through someone else, telling her exact story but saying it was someone else, and there were definitely against it. Another character named Lennie was struggling with a common problem amongst teens as well, bullying. He was being bullied at school by the same group of the people that Alice’s rapist was in. In Lennie’s family, his dad was catching wind of a
The theme of the play has to do with the way that life is an endless cycle. You're born, you have some happy times, you have some bad times, and then you die. As the years pass by, everything seems to change. But all in all there is little change. The sun always rises in the early morning, and sets in the evening. The seasons always rotate like they always have. The birds are always chirping. And there is always somebody that has life a little bit worse than your own.
He opens the play with a very exposing account of what life used to be
...h other or from their situation in general. The optimistic view of the play shows a range of human emotion and the need to share experiences alongside the suffering of finite existence; governed by the past, acting in the present and uncertain of the future.