eric birling

Question 1

how eric has morals

Answer 1

“[involuntarily] My God!”
he could not suppress his emotional reaction
excess emotion condemns feminine traits such as hysteria.
priestley wants the audience to get over that and shows that human emotions are normal and necessary for society to improve

Question 2

reaction to death contrast

Answer 2

Mr Birling responds “rather impatiently” and dismisses her suicide with “yes yes. Horrible business”.

Question 3

eric rhetorical question condemn fathers view

Answer 3

“why shouldn’t they try for higher wages?”
shows empathy which separates him (and sheila) from other characters

Question 4

how eric manipulates the audience

Answer 4

“and that’s when it happened”
pronoun “it” doesn’t specifically say he raped her. it makes the audience fill in the gaps.

priestley does this to make the audience perceive eric as redeemable so that he can be favoured by the audience for socialist ideas

Question 5

eric’s euphemism

Answer 5

“state when a ship easily turns nasty” to substitute eric being drunk

this normalised eric’s lack of restraint, blaming it on him being drunk and not his morals.

prompts the question if he would have abused eva if he was sober