Inspector Calls Flashcards
Key themes in inspector calls?
Age
Gender
Social responsibility
Class
Mr Birling quotes?
“I’m talking as a hard-headed practical man of business”
‘you’ll hear some people say war is Inevitable … fiddlesticks!’
‘The Titanic is unsinkable absolutely unsinkable’
“A man must make his own way in life’’
‘’Lower costs huger prices’’
“you’d think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed up like bees in a hive’’
“Probably a Socialist or some sort of crank”
“there’s every excuse for what your mother and I did”
‘’The famous younger generation who know it all’’
Mrs birling quotes?
“girls of that class”
‘‘I’m very sorry. But I think she only had herself to blame’’
“I’ve done nothing wrong – and you know it.”
“Go and look for the father of the child. It’s his responsibility.”
“As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!”
‘’I accept no blame at all”
Sheila quotes?
“A pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather pleased with life” (stage directions)
“Mummy”
“Mother”
“these girls aren’t cheap Labour their people”
“And if I could help her now I would”
“You mustn’t try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl. If you do the Inspector will just break it down”
“We drove this girl to suicide”
Eric quotes?
“In his early twenties, not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive” (stage directions)
“Why shouldn’t they try for higher wages? We try for the highest possible prices”
“Well I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty”
“You’re not the kind of father a chap could go to when he’s in trouble- that’s why.”
And I say the girl’s dead and we all helped to kill her- and that’s what matters”
Gerald quotes?
“An attractive chap about thirty, rather too manly to be a dandy but very much the easy well-bred young man-about-town”
“You couldn’t have done anything else” (sacking Eva Smith)
“After all, y’know, we’re respectable citizens and not criminals”
“It’s a favourite haunt of women of the town”
“I didn’t install her there so I could make love to her”
“I became at once the most important person in her life”
“Everything’s all right now Sheila. What about this ring?”
Inspector quotes?
“Need not be a big man but he creates at once an impression of massiveness”
“it’s better to ask for the World than to take it”
“If there’s nothing else we have to share our guilt”
(the young ones) “Are the most impressionable”
“Public men, Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges”
“and you slammed the door in her face”
“there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us”
“We are all members of one body”
“if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish”
