An Inspector Calls Analysis

Question 1

Explain what Mr Birling symbolises

Answer 1

Birling is corrupt and unfeeling, caring nothing for the people he has power over. He symbolises capitalism.

Question 2

Explain the possible connotations of Mr Birling’s name

Answer 2

Arthur is named after King Arthur, to symbolise how much power he has in society as a rich manufacturer, magistrate and Lord Mayor. This is also used ironically, because King Arthur is a symbol of good rule - he’s an idealised king, unlike Mr Birling, who Priestley wants the audience to detest.

Question 3

Explain how Mr Birling links to 1945 politics

Answer 3

• When he describes himself, ‘I’m talking as a hard headed, practical man of business” which is an allusion to the “hard headed man of business”, a phrase used by a prime minister between the wars, to show how the business owners made profits from the war. This was echoed in the Labour Party Manifesto of 1945.
• Priestly wanted to show that socialism is the idea of caring for everyone in society, which he believed would save them from another war.
• War was a way of making profit, for example creating solider’s uniforms that would be used by millions and building panes that would be destroyed and need replacement.

Question 4

Explain how Mr Birling uses capitalism to his advantages

Answer 4

• Capitalism treats women as commodities. Birling is willing to sell his daughter to Gerald as a business opportunity. Firstly, he wants her to accept the infidelity: “Now, Sheila, I’m not defending him. But you must understand that a lot of young men…”
• Mr Birling refers to the marriage as an ‘alliance’ between companies. He sees this mariage as a way to improve business.

Question 5

Explain the possible connotations of Mr Birling’s reference to the Titanic

Answer 5

• His reference to the Titanic as “unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable” is dramatic irony intended to make him look stupid and, as a symbol of rich capitalists, make them look stupid also.
• In addition, the Titanic possibly represents the upper classes - Priestley wants to show that their power and privilege will also be sunk by the peace and election which follow the second world war.

Question 6

State the themes are represented through the character Eva Smith

Answer 6

• Priestly uses her as a construct to represent the working classes, the “millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths.”
• But she also represents the female workforce. Priestley does this because it is women who now have the vote in 1945, but didn’t in 1912.
• Women are therefore the ones who are most likely to reject the lack of power they have had, and vote for a Labour government and a socialist society.

Question 7

Explain how Eva Smith represents female empowerment

Answer 7

• Women also have by far the most to gain economically. The root of Eva’s tragedy is that she does not have economic independence
• She is lucky to get the Milwards job, as a vacancy only occurs due to the death of the previous worker through “influenza”.
• Over a million women have also been lucky in the Second World War, as they took on the jobs left by men conscripted into the armed forces. They know that, like the women who were employed in the first world war, they will lose their jobs if the government is dominated by capitalists.

Question 8

Explain what Eva Smith’s names possibly symbolise

Answer 8

• Eva is named after Eve, the mother of mankind in Genesis. This means Priestley wants her to represent women of every class, not just the working classes.
• He does this by focusing on the sexual exploitation she suffers.
• This idea of exploitation is also spelled out in her choice of name, Daisy Renton.
• This clearly implies how she sees her relationship with Gerald as for “rent”
• This is ironic as Gerald recieves a set of rooms for free from a friend who went to Canada for 6 months. However, when the friend comes back, Gerald abandons Eva as he would have to find mother house for her to live in and start paying rent. This is no longer ‘convenient’ for Gerald.

Question 9

Explain the economic bargain that women are forced to make through the character of Eva Smith

Answer 9

• Eva accepts the economic bargain which Gerald offers, security and accommodation in exchange for him to sexually exploit her.
• This is the same bargain which Sheila is being asked to make in accepting Gerald even though he has been unfaithful to her. Society encourages women to accept this and call it love. The way out of this, of course, is employment.
• An employed woman does not have to accept a husband who is unfaithful. Priestley wants the women in his audience to seek this status.

Question 10

Explain how the consequences of sexual exploitation are shown through the character Eva Smith

Answer 10

• In her choice of disinfectant, Priestley is pointing out his disgust at the sexual exploitation which has led Eva to this terrible decision.
• Eva would rather die than accept anything from Eric. Not just his stolen money, or his offer of marriage. She even rejects his child. She wants to be cleansed, or purified of every trace of Eric, hence the disinfectant.
• This is a quite astonishing decision and truly reflects Priestley’s anger not just at the financial inequalities, but at terrible sexism in his patriarchal society.
• This is what makes it a feminist play.

Question 11

Explain what the Inpector represents

Answer 11

• The Inspector is a proxy for Priestley’s socialist views. The simple part of his message is delivered just before he leaves.
• His socialist message is that we are “intertwined” with everyone, and so have a responsibility to the working classes, in their “millions and millions and millions”.
• “We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.”

Question 12

Explain how Priestly shows the theme of Christianity in AIC through the Inspector

Answer 12

• “We are members of one body” is a deliberate echo of the communion, because 80% of a 1945 audience would be regular church goers, and the Biblical allusion would be obvious to them. This links Priestley’s socialist message, that “we are all responsible for each other” to the Christian message which even the most anti socialist capitalist will already accept in Christian teaching.
• This is much more persuasive than simple politics – it tells his audience that the only moral, Christian society must also be socialist.

Question 13

Explain how Priestly has made this an anti-war play

Answer 13

• His very final words are “And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they well be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.”
• The prediction of “fire and blood and anguish” is clearly a description of both World Wars.
• Priestley is making a direct link between capitalism and the desire for war.

Question 14

Explain how war is an economic consequence of capitalism

Answer 14

• The “lesson” is that in order to expand markets and defeat competition, Britain will go to war against its main economic rival, Germany, with devastating consequences for the upper classes, who lost more sons.
• This was due to their status as officers - officers led from the front, and of course were much more likely to be shot once out of the trenches.

Question 15

Explain the feminist message presented by the inspector

Answer 15

• There is a feminist message. It is “men”, not ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ who must learn this lesson.
• The Inspector is appealing directly to Priestley’s female audience, and inviting them to see war as a male idea. Voting for socialism will also reject Churchill, the great wartime Prime Minister.
• This is extraordinary when we look back on it. Churchill was arguably the most popular Prime Minister Britain had ever had. But he was forever identified with war.
• Like Priestley, his female audience rejected war, and Labour won a landslide victory.

Question 16

Explain how the stage directions have an effect on the portrayal of the inspector

Answer 16

• As the teacher, the Inspector has made his point, and the death of Eva smith and her child has had a powerful impact on the Birlings - “Eric is brooding” while Sheila is “quietly crying.”
• However, in performance, this scene can possibly be portrayed with outrage and quite aggressive anger. In the stage directions, there is a “front door slam” which is the last sound of the Act.

Question 17

Explain the political purpose of the play

Answer 17

• The family of 1912 reject the lesson, so the two World Wars happen.
• The play is a further chance for the lesson to be learned by the audience.
• Priestly had a popular radio show, but Winston Churchill told the BBC to sack Priestly has he did not like his socialist views. Therefore, Priestly is trying to show that the upper class has too much power.
• That’s the political purpose of the play, with the Inspector and Priestley taking on the role of the teacher.

Question 18

State 4 main points about Sheila

Answer 18

• Although she learns the Inspector’s lesson, she cannot act on it, because she has no political voice, or social power.
• In 1912, women have no vote. Priestly sets the play in 1912 to show how women had a lack of power.
• She cannot become independent of her parents except through marriage.
• She does not dismiss Gerald, but offers to “start again” and doesn’t refuse the engagement ring, saying only “not yet”.

Question 19

Explain how Shiela symbolises the patriarchal society in the play

Answer 19

• The patriarchal society is likely why her learning the lesson is not enough to prevent the second phone call, and the second death of Eva. Perhaps either Sheila did not learn her lesson because she went back to Gerald, or she learnt her lesson but was powerless to act and forced to go back to Gerald.
• It also suggests that she will be forced by the patriarchal society to marry Gerald. He is at least “honest” about his affair. Sheila is grateful for this.
• It implies she knows that any upper class male is likely to have affairs and be deceitful. Gerald’s regret makes him stand out in contrast to the way another husband might exploit and deceive her.

Question 20

Explain how Sheila represents how women were disenfranchised (having no right to vote)

Answer 20

• Financially, and socially, Sheila won’t find a better husband. Priestley implies that Sheila will be unable to resist marrying him because she has no reasonable alternative. This, of course, is a tragedy.
• She has learned the Inspector’s lesson, but is powerless to act on it. Even if she behaves as though “we are all of one body”, it makes little difference to society, as she has no vote, and being female she can’t influence society by being an MP or running her father’s business.

Question 21

Explain how Priestly shows that men are the main problem through Shiela

Answer 21

• The inspector leaves towards the beginning of act 3, and Shiela acts in the place of the inspector, asking her family similar questions.
• Sheila delivers part of Priestley’s message, that “men” are the danger to society, and “men” have twice taken the country to war.

Question 22

State some main points about Sybil Birling

Answer 22

• Symbolises the uncaring nature of capitalism, “But I accept no blame for it at all.”
• Symbolises pride - the Morality Play
• Symbolises class prejudice - “girls of that class.”

Question 23

Explain Sybil Birling’s name

Answer 23

• Sybil is named after the Sibyls from Greek myth, who were famous for their gifts of prophecy and the ability to see into the future. This is ironic, as Sybil is blind to the truth
• She knows nothing of Eric’s alcohol addiction, is totally unaware of Alderman Meggarty’s sexual attacks on young women, has no idea Eric is in a relationship with Eva, or that he has got her pregnant.
• When she is confronted with the truth, she refuses to believe it: “I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it…”
• She also exhibits this blindness by expecting Sheila to turn a blind eye to Gerald’s infidelity, “just as I had” - social blindness
• The sexist patriarchal society has forced her to accept the injustice of the man that she is married to so that she could live a happy life.

Question 24

Explain Sybil Birling’s link to welfare state

Answer 24

• Sybil is kept till last because she represents the last resort, the safety net that society should provide to the poor.
• In 1945, this was the birth of the welfare state.
• In 1912 and between the war, welfare was often left to charities. This is what Priestley is wants to change. So, he shows how charity cannot possibly work.
• Priestly is trying to show the need for the government to provide help instead of charities, which is a flawed system because the rich provide the money for charities, so the rich decided who gets the welfare. Therefore, this money will not be distributed equally.

Question 25

Explain if Sybil Birling is right to disbelieve Eva

Answer 25

• Priestly doesn’t show that Mrs Birling is corrupt. Yes, she is dismissive of Eva, and “girls of that class”. But actually most women in charge of the charity would be suspicious of Eva.
• Eva begins by lying about her name, as Birling. So firstly, this is fraud to gain money.
• Secondly, she lies about the father of the child, claiming that he had abandoned her after marrying her.
• “I’d refused to believe her original story - that she was a married woman who’d been deserted by her husband. I didn’t see any reason to believe that one story should be any truer than the other.”
• So, when Eva does tell her that she refused to marry Eric because they weren’t in love, and that she refused to take money from him because it was stolen, these both sound like lies.
• Any reasonable person would have to question them.
• Therefore, Priestly is trying to show that if there was a welfare state, there would be proper checks on people, and those who needed help would receive it.
• This is better than relying on charities to judge people’s intentions. In addition, charities do not have an infinite amount of money, so some people will have to be turned away.

Question 26

Explain how Eric personifies capitalism as theft

Answer 26

• The traditional view is that Eric learns the Inspector’s lesson. “Well, I don’t blame you. But don’t forget I’m ashamed of you as well- yes both of you.”
• He takes no responsibility for his actions. He forces himself on Eva, but claims he has no memory of what happened. He says only that “it seems” he behaved badly, “in that state in which a chap turns nasty”.
• He distances himself from this by refusing to use the personal pronoun, “I”, so that he doesn’t have to feel responsible.
• This refusal to accept responsibility is made worse by the amount he steals, £50, which was a lot of money during that time period.

Question 27

Explain the idea of upper class drunkenness through Eric

Answer 27

• Finally, although he claims to reject his parents’ views about the Inspector, this only occurs because he is drunk. He is “squiffy” at the beginning of the evening, but has had far more to drink since. In particular, the Inspector has just given him a lot more brandy since his return.
• This is another reason that Eva’s second death occurs. Eva’s first death symbolises the First World War, and her second death symbolises the Second World War. Society was supposed to learn its lesson from the First World War, but they still ended up fighting a Second World War. When Eric seems to learn his lesson, he was drunk, so what he learnt does not take any effect on him.

Question 28

Explain how Eric symbolises the future

Answer 28

• Priestly possibly wrote the play as an attack on the generation of upper class men still choosing to exploit people, despite experiencing the horrors of the First World War.
• He is a similar age to Priestley at the start of the first world war. Like Priestley, if he is lucky enough to survive, he will experience its full horrors.
• But even these are not enough to change his behaviour - if they were, the generation of upper class men Eric represents would have avoided a second world war, and, in Priestley’s eyes, would have embraced social responsibility, if not socialist political beliefs.

Question 29

Explain how Eric symbolises the tragedy of the lost youth

Answer 29

• Another possibility is that Priestley does believe that Eric has learned the lesson. If this is so, he cannot change the future because, we imagine, he gets killed in the first world war.
• Eric then becomes a symbol of the generation of upper class youth who would have learned social responsibility through fighting the war.
• But the lesson was lost, because their lives were lost. In this interpretation, the older generation represented by the Birlings, held on to power for far too long because too many of the youth who would normally replace them had died in the war.

Question 30

Explain the Inspector’s view of Gerald’s actions

Answer 30

• The Inspector is not very critical of Gerald. This is probably because Priestly himself was openly unfaithful in his marriage, and did not disapprove of Gerald’s affair with Eva.
• This is why the Inspector is complimentary about him, “he at least had some affection for her and made her happy for a time.”

Question 31

Explain Shiela’s perspective on social conditioning through Gerald

Answer 31

• Sheila is accepting Gerald’s actions, “And now at least you’ve been honest. And I believe what you told us about the way you helped her at first. Just out of pity.”
• But Priestley also invites our moral outrage. Sheila is prepared to accept this honesty because the patriarchal society has conditioned her to accept infidelity in return for financial security and social status.

Question 32

Explain how Gerald cleverly deceives people through sophistry

Answer 32

• Sophistry is arguing something that is false so well that it sounds true
• So Priestley also lets us see the huge number of Gerald’s deceptions.
• He gets her drunk before he feeds her at that first meeting.
• She tells him so many details which match exactly what the Birlings know of her, but he still pretends they are all different girls.
• This is so that Gerald can make the argument that if the events all happened to different girls, what the inspector is saying about the suicide being the Birlings’ fault does not matter. Gerald’s argument that it could be different photos of different girls - in theory it’s possible, but the probability of the facts that the other family members have stated being true is too great.

Question 33

Explain how Gerald represents middle class men and sexual exploitation

Answer 33

• He installs Daisy Renton in a flat which is lent to him by a friend.
• “It happened that a friend of mine … had gone off to Canada for six months and had let me have the key of a nice little set of rooms.”
• His language shows what he wants the rooms for a sexual adventure.
• He ends the affair as soon as the friend returns from Canada, rather than pay to put her up in another apartment: “she’d lived very economically on what I’d allowed her”.
• Even with this and his parting gift to her, she can only fund 2 months stay in a bed and breakfast at the seaside. This is much less than he would have had to pay in renting a flat in Brumley.
• Additionally, Gerald lies about meeting a police sergeant and fakes his feelings for Eva. He pretends to be upset by her death, but uses the time only to find a police sergeant he knows already, to find out if Goole is a real inspector. Therefore, Gerald wants to pretend that what they all did to Eva has no consequence if the Inspector is not real.

Question 34

Explain how Gerald portrays the theme of capitalism

Answer 34

• Gerald is the real face of capitalism in 1945 - at over 30, he will be old enough to escape the First World War, running his father’s textile company for the war effort in 1914.
• He is the kind of capitalist who has exploited the country between the two world wars.
• He is therefore possibly the person and symbol who Priestley most wants us to reject.