inspector Flashcards
inspector vs mr b thesis
throughout his didactic play priestley directly contrasts the attitudes of his mouthpeice in the inspector with his antithesis in the pompous arthur birling who is overtly immoral and arrogant, in villainising him it makes the morality of socialism even more evident
mr b vs inspector paragrpah
-‘heavy looking and portentous’ vs ‘plain and darkish’ but ‘with an impression of massivemess’ both of these focus on the size of the foils, but its contrastingas whilst mr briling is weighted down by greed and personfiies the overweight pig like nature of the individualistic nature of capitalism the isnpector despite being descreetly dressed and peaceful appearing does not need to try to overcompensate with size or materialsim in order to conduct a room, showing his asurred nature
- whilst the prescnce of the inspector commands a room with his giant manner, mr birling and hence capitalism has to hide their arrogance and backwards nature through speaking in great quanitity and silencing their peers, but with no real substance to his wording. in contrast to this the inspector speaks ‘comfrtoably and weightily’ he does not have to assert his dominence he can rely on the facts and the depth of his wording as scoailsim is far more comfortable
on the other hand mr b speaks with a lot of dramatic irony, his faith in the economic system that he feels as an indsurtralist he raised leads him to mispredict the titanic
inspector as omniscicne
priestley uses the inspector not only as a mouthpiece for his own social views but as a mouthpiece for overt morality to the point where he seems to be that of an omnisicnt divine power, cementing his political message as of high importance
- he has an overt focus on the idea of ‘duty’ whcih means he is always stuck to a strong moral compass, when mr b offers him a drink he declines as he is ‘on duty’- him declining capitalism is symbolic but also as alchohol is a motif throuhgout of causing people to become immoral and do wrong. duty is alw=so a recurring theme and we see how the other cemented capitalist chatracters hold a warped preception of it like mrs b who uses it to belittle vunerable fallen women
- he uses several biblical aluusions and foreshadowing which gives us an impression of omniscince. his poliftical values dont really hold a place in 1912 and its clear hes meant to appeal to a modern audeince, already showing him as favourable over the very edwardian family, but also hes speaking to a post war group- making him more omnisceint
- he uses connotations to hell in ‘burnt her insides out’ and ‘fire blood and anguish’ in order to up shock value and show how bad life wa sfor eva that it is worse than hell, as indeed suicide was a sin.
- ‘were members of one body’ calls to the communal aspect of scoailism but also is ageneisis quote as if he is actually a messange from heaven
