An Inspector Calls
How does Priestley use the character of the Inspector to convey his own opinions and attitudes?
An Inspector Calls, set in 1912, is a play with many social and political messages. J. B. Priestley believed a great deal in socialism and believed that many other people needed to be more caring about their community and the people in it. Priestley uses the character of the Inspector to convey his own thoughts, feelings and opinions about social issues. However, he also uses other characters, particularly Mr.Birling, to show the audience how cynical some people can be.
It is possible that J.B.Priestley set this play in 1912 for a reason. Arthur Birling is a rich businessman who thinks very highly of himself, even though he is often wrong.
Arthur's family respect him and listen intently to his ideas that 'there isn't a chance of war' and the Titanic is 'unsinkable.' As the play was written in 1947 and set in 1912, this is an example of dramatic irony and the audience would know that Arthur was very wrong in his opinions and might even think him to be stupid. When he says 'the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you'd think everybody has to look after everybody else', he explicitly says that he is strongly Capitalist and is narrow minded. Priestley wanted the audience to have a low opinion of Birling because he was discouraging his Capitalist politics and trying to show people like Birling to be at fault When Mr.Birling makes his speech he makes several points which Priestley himself disagrees with, he uses the Inspector as a medium to make a point to both the Birling family and the audience that we shouldn’t all “Look out for our own” which is how Birling describes it. According to Mr.Birling every man should put himself first, even before his family. We know this when he says “A man should look out for himself, and his family if he has one”; this shows just how full of self-importance he actually is. The timing of the Inspector’s entrance is immediately after Birling has made this speech.
Throughout the play there are hints that the Inspector isn’t all he seems to be, is it possible that he’s actually just a fraud claiming to be an Inspector? The Inspector called himself 'Goole,' which could be a pun on the word 'ghoul' which is often referred to as some kind of ghostly being. Towards the end of this script it becomes appa...
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...police saying that 'A girl has just died.... after swallowing some disinfectant' and a real Inspector will question the family. This is an unexpected twist. The fake Inspector was there to punish them on a moral level and to try and make them feel guilty enough to change their behaviour. This was accomplished with Eric and Sheila, but not with the others. The only thing that they would be affected by was a 'public scandal,' and the real Inspector would ensure that that is what they would get. Without this twist, it would seem that the Birling parents and Gerald would escape unpunished. The Inspector's main purpose is to teach. In the context of the play, he told the characters what had happened to a particular girl because they had each been guilty of selfishness. In regards to the whole of society, he voiced Priestley's opinions that we cannot make any progress if we do not work together.
In my opinion, those watching or reading the play today would not gain as much from the story in regards to the moral teachings because most have now accepted the advantages of Socialism over Capitalism and so do not have as much to learn on the arguments of this issue as the audiences of 1947.
An Inspector Calls was written in 1945 but set in 1912. The play shows the stark difference between 1912 and 1945. J. B. Priestley reveals the errors of society and the faults of capitalism as well as the bias of the upper class and social status. As a firm believer in the concepts of socialism, he uses this play to expose society’s poor attitudes to the working class of the period. The way they treat Eva Smith reflects on how many of the working class may have been treated by their social superiors. Eva was a victim in society as she was very low in the financial hierarchy as well as in reality where she was at the bottom of the classes. Women at that time were seen as being delicate, obedient to their husbands. The inspector is used to correct the
A Comparison of Characters of Mr. Birling and Inspector Goole in J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls
The Dramatic Techniques J.B. Priestley Used to Create and Develop Tension in Act one of An Inspector Calls
talks with. He is a man who has come to the Birling's house to do his
JB Priestley’s intent in ‘An Inspector Calls’ was to convey the attitudes of socialism to the minds of the society in the Edwardian Era as he was a passionate believer of the concept. Priestley has attempted this through the employment of ‘Inspector Goole’ in the play. In the play drama is displayed through a variety of methods for the interest of the audience and the communication of personal views from JB Priestley.
Priestley's Use of Characters to Send a Political and Social Message to the Audience in An Inspector Calls
Oscar Wilde, the writer of The Importance of Being Earnest, celebrated the Victorian Era society while criticizing it in his play. Through his play, he utilized the humorous literary techniques of pun, irony, and satire to comment on the impact of Victorian Era society left on the characters themselves. These comedic literary devices also help to show how the members of this society in the Victorian Era live by a set of unspoken rules that determine politeness, as well as proper etiquette to live by. Wilde uses a pun in the title of the work, as well as in the character personalities. Different types of irony appear in many scenes in the play, to flout the rules of society, as well as mock the intelligence of the upper-class characters, compared to the lower-class characters. Wilde satirizes the rules of the upper-class society of the Victorian Era through the dialogue of the characters. The time period in which these characters live, impacts their daily lives, and their personalities.
The Inspector, straight form his introduction, is commanding and authoritative. Upon his entrance he creates, “…at once an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness.”(PG.11) The Inspector continues to create this impression as he progresses through his speeches and through his interrogation of the family. The Inspector remains confident, sturdy and composed, while people around him crumble and fall to pieces. His ‘solidity’ is proven by the fact he remains on task despite numerous attempts from Birling to digress from the points he is making. The Inspector is told to appear ‘purposeful’; this is shown where he explains to Birling that Birlings way of thinking “Every man must only look out for himself,” is not the case, and all warps of society are interlinked. The view is best illustrated in the Inspectors final speech, where he says, “We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.”(p.56). This idea is one that Priestley, himself believed in deeply, and many of Priestleys writing shared this very theme.
Consider the role of the Inspector in “An Inspector Calls”? And what we learn about Priestley’s view on society through the character and his effect on others.
Through his play Priestley endeavoured to convey a message to the audiences, that we could not go on being self obsessed and that we had to change our political views. He used the Birling family as an example of the Capitalist family that was common amongst the higher classes in 1912, who took no responsibility for other people and he showed this with the power of Socialism, represented by the inspector; the uneasy facade put on by the Birling family to cover up their real flaws and how they have treated those whom they considered to be lower class could not stand up to any scrutiny without shame for what had happened, showing that they know they have been wrong.
Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” epitomizes the idiosyncrasy of the Victorian society through satire and wit. Throughout the play Wilde criticizes the common perception of the mid seventeenth through early eighteenth century culture, “Prudish, hypocritical, stuffy and narrow minded”. With his quintessential characters and intricate situations Wilde configures the perfect depiction of the carless irrationality of social life, the frivolity of the wealthy, the importance of money, and the lack of reverence for marriage often manifested by those in this era. Wilde also jabs at the Victorian convention to uphold the appearance of decency in order to hide the cruel, indignant and manipulative attitudes of the time. Through setting, characters, comedy, and a great deal of drama Oscar Wilde portrays his views on the elitist of his time.
Throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde plays around with the standard expectations along with the absence of compassion of a Victorian society in the 1890’s, he demonstrates this through several genres of comedy such as Melodrama, Comedy of Manners, Farce, dark humour and Irony, as well as portraying the themes, death and illness, in this play in a brilliance of unusual amount of references.
One of the Oscar Wilde’s most loved, well known and successful play ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ was written during the summer of 1894 at Worthing, England. It was first performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James’s theatre, London. Jack Worthing, the play’s main character was found and adopted by a wealthy man, Thomas Cardew in a handbag at a railway line where he was accidentally abandoned as a baby. All the respect that has been given to him as acknowledged upper-class Victorian is only because of his adopted father’s wealth. As the protagonist of the play he is expected to be an earnest man to do justice to the title of the play, but it turned out to be that he is nowhere close to that. Wilde has used Jack’s character more to an instrument to represent a set of ideas or attitudes.
The “act dumb” negotiator: pretends not to understand the issue so that the opponent, or opponents, will become so exasperated that he, or someone in the group, will accidentally reveal information.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners, whereby Oscar Wilde uses satire to ridicule marriage, love and the mentality of the Victorian aristocratic society. It can also be referred to as a satiric comedy. What is a satire and what is Oscar Wilde trying to emphasize by employing it in his play? A satiric comedy ridicules political policies or attacks deviations from social order by making ridiculous, the violators of its standards of morals or manners. Usually, a satiric piece doesn't serve only as a form of criticism, but to correct flaws in the characters or to somehow make them better in the end.