An Inspector Calls - Show how the playwright uses Sheila Birling and
Mr. Birling to reveal the disparities between social and moral attitudes
of father and daughter.
Show how the playwright uses Sheila Birling and Mr. Birling to reveal
the disparities between social and moral attitudes of father and
daughter. Explain how the director would make these disparities clear
in a stage production of the play.
There are numerous differences that are revealed between the
characters of Miss Sheila Birling and Mr. Birling during the course of
the play 'An Inspector Calls' ; Most Particularly between social and
moral attitudes.
In Act 1 Mr. Birling acts in a very self confident and smug way. He
strongly believes in a capitalist world. You can tell this from his
speech that begins;
"A man has to make his own way - has to look after himself - and his
family too, of course, when he has one - and so long as he does that
he wont come to much harm"
Mr. Birling says how he must look after himself, and then almost
forgetting his family, as though they are an after thought, or a
hindrance. Birling doesn't care how his actions affect others.
"We were paying the usual rates and if they didn't like those rates,
they could go and work somewhere else. It's a free country, I told
them"
This confirms to the audience that Mr. Birling is a harsh business
man, out to make money in any way he can. Mr. Birling is almost self
obsessed and believes that everyone has to look after themselves and
no one else. He is arrogant and doesn't seem to learn, or want to. I
believe the playwright shows him like this to make his downfall, later
on in the play, seem greater but Priestly also illustrates him like
this to show his lack ...
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... can be knocked over, only because of their wrong doings in the past.
For Mr. Birling it was 2 years before, for Sheila it was more
recently. But the same applies to both of them, they both did some
thing dreadful and didn't take responsibility and they didn't think of
what they were really doing to poor Eva Smith. This resulted in the
past catching up with them and they ended the play in a very bad
situation. Mr. Birling still keeps his moral arrogance and so ignores
the fact that he has done something bad. Whereas Sheila takes
responsibility for her actions and finds new morals. Priestly overall
message from the play is to think before you mess something up, and
take responsibility for your actions.
Priestly has made Mr. Birling's Moral arrogance obvious to the
audience by using the Inspector to get the truth out of Mr. Birling.
The Inspector reveals.
Priestley mainly uses the characters in the play to present his views, especially Mr and Mrs Birling, to present his ideas about class and society. In the Birling family, Mrs Birling is the most upper class, and is always referring to the lower class female factory workers such as Eva Smith as ‘girls of that class’. She seems to think that working class people are not humans at all.
He spends all his daylight hours alone he has lots of time to think about his family's situation.
Mr Arthur Birling is the man of the house he has his wife Sybil, his
I think that Priestley’s main aim in the play is to get across to the
Mr Birling is a very cruel man. I think this because of what he did to
into manhood you must not despair of life, but gather strength to sustain you.” From this
“I have lived every day of my life asking myself ‘is what I’m doing reflective of who I am? Or who I want to be?’ If not...”
Priestley's Social Message in An Inspector Calls The play an Inspector Call’s was written at the time of 1945 but is set in 1912. Priestley conveys a lot of social and important messages in this play. He conveys the messages through the character of Inspector Goole. One most important message that Priestley conveys is about Socialism.
If this man wants to eat a cookie before dinner, he will eat the cookie simply because he chooses to. The cookie is irrelevant. He begins to form new values with his choice as the guiding force. No more blindly obeying codes previously laid down in the past, this man has see...
Living every day like it is your last is good way to live. He wanted to know what his life was worth. So he decided to make something of it. He went to Stanford dropped out, best decision of his life, then started up his own company. He realized that one day you can be the richest man on earth then th...
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Birling is presented as a self-centred capitalist very early on in the play. His pleasure in the marriage of his daughter is purely for his own profit. "Now you've brought us together and perhaps we may look forward to a time when Crofts and Birling are no longer competing but are worki...
we know dies a tragic death which, may or may not have occurred if it
...es that we are all unique in our own way and at some point will realize our potential and try to achieve more not that our genes made us act the way we do.
quote: "For the secret of man's being is not only to live... but to live for something