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 ...
... middle of paper ...
... 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.
Willy, Linda, Biff and Happy are all characters that use self- deception as a way to mentally escape the terrible reality of their lives. As the play progresses, and ends Biff is truly the one and only character that becomes self- aware. At the end of the play Biff accepts the lies his family and him have been living in for years. Biff makes huge changes mentally at the end of the play, which cannot be said for the rest of the Loman family.
Priestley has presented Birling as an arrogant, egotistical, right wing or capitalist man. Priestley himself was a socialist. He believes that as a society, we have to look after one another and that the government should give the unemployed people or refugees free health cares and free education. This tells us that Priestley wouldn’t make Mr. Birling look good in this story as capitalists like Mr. Birling only care about wealth. This story was set in 1912 which was before WWI and was written in 1946 which was just after the WWII. This means Priestley had lived through the two great wars, which probably had a huge impact on him. He used dramatic irony especially with regards to Mr. Birling. In the play, Mr. Birling was confident about the theories
Mr Birling is a very cruel man. I think this because of what he did to
Drama in J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls J.B. Priestley is the author of 'An Inspector Calls', he wrote and published the play in 1945. The play he created was set in an industrial town called 'Brumley'. In 'An Inspector Calls' there are six main characters, one being an inspector who goes by the name of Goole. Inspector Goole questions the five other characters about a young working-class woman's, named Eva, death. During questioning, each of the Birling family, Sheila, Eric, Sybil and Arthur, all reveal that they have a secret connection with Eva, along with Gerald Croft, who is engaged to Sheila Birling.
The play is set in the house of the Birling family. As soon as the
So we already know that Mr Birling is a man of some meaning who is
as at the end of the play, it is the Birlings that are in hell, maybe
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
we know dies a tragic death which, may or may not have occurred if it
Through a series of events, Biff gradually comes to a realization of what is necessary for success. First, we are shown a part of his childhood where Biff is told that "the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead." This idea appears in direct contrast to Bernard, one of Biff's childhood friends, who works and studies hard. Biff decides that Bernard will not succeed because he is "only liked, not well-liked," and being well-liked is the cornerstone of success. Nonetheless, later in the play we see that Bernard has become very successful, underscoring one of the messages in the play, that success is not just a result of popularity. Second, we are shown a scene in Boston soon after Biff has just failed math for the year. He discovers his "heroic" father having an affair. Biff comes to the painful realization that his father's values, his views, and everything that Biff had made the foundation of his life, are all completely "fake" and "phony." Unfortunately, he has nothing with which to replace it. Lastly, Biff decides to leave to try and find himself, but an argument develops between Biff and Willy. Biff begins to see himself as like his father, "nothing," just an average man trying to make a living, and quite possibly failing. Biff's earlier image of his father's greatness has crumbled entirely, leaving a lost young man trying to find his way. Biff realized that he now needs to find his own values in life. He has finally tasted reality and now must dive head first into the pot, without any real preparation.
“Whether or not I deliberate about what to do, it is sometimes up to me what I do.”
Gerald as young men that '…a man has to mind his own business and look
If I can successfully shape my life around ideas of self-reliance I can be exactly who I want to be. I look around me and don’t want to conform to society’s standards, I recognize that there is an easy way out, but try my best to remain true to myself by following my heart with pure conviction. Because of my desire to remain true to myself, I closely identify with Emerson in “Self-Reliance”: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius.”
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.
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...