introduction to AIC and plot analysis:

Question 1

when was it written and set?

Answer 1

• written in 1945, during WW2
• set in 1912

Question 2

describe society in 1912:

Answer 2

• upper and middle class were comfortable (wealthy, powerful as the men had businesses or professional jobs).
• lower class had to work hard for little money, in middle class owned factories.
• they were expected to provide for themselves, so support for those in need was limited. they couldn’t help themselves.
• priestley used this society to get people thinking about the inequality in 1945.

Question 3

what is the strong message in AIC?

Answer 3

• audience knows characters’ world will go through terrible things (e.g. WW1).
• challenges audience to think about how many more disasters lie ahead for them if they don’t learn from past mistakes.
• asks audience to unite to improve society.

Question 4

describe the first portrayal of the Birlings (and the hints of conflict):

Answer 4

• everyone is content, saying right things.
• Birlings are Priestley’s idea of a ‘perfect’ middle class family: successful businessman, mother upholds Birling reputation, son works in family business.
• daughter is engaged to competitor family: improves business - they work together in the future.
• crofts are socially superior- makes arthur anxious.
• men supposed to be busy with work and the world of public affairs - women supposed to be interested in family, clothes, and social etiquette.

Question 5

what is said in mr birling’s lecture?

Answer 5

• confident about future and his predictions. audience of 1946 know what coming, and that he’s wrong.
• says conflicts between workers and bosses will come to nothing (general strike of 1926, when country stopped for 9 days).
• says titanic is ‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’.
• arthur says there’s no way there’ll be a war in germany.

Question 6

what is the effect of mr birling’s lecture?

Answer 6

dramatic irony is used to make him look overconfident. makes the audience think he may be wrong about a lot of other things, such as his belief in the motto ‘every man for himself’.

Question 7

describe when the inspector calls:

Answer 7

• blunt account of death.
• harsh language (‘burnt her inside out’) contrasts with polite and playful atmosphere at start. catches birlings off guard, helping him.
• THEME: the Birlings’ family life is held together by secrets and polite behaviour. the inspector disrupts everything and lets the secrets out.

Question 8

describe Birling’s story:

Answer 8

• gives him false sense of being charge as he tells story.
• workers at his factory went on strike after he refused a pay rise.
• he wanted to protect profits and prevent strikes, so sacked ringleaders (eva smith). sees them as ‘cheap labour’ - maximum profit for the individual.
• political element. rights of workers against interests of businessman.

Question 9

how is eva smith described?

Answer 9

‘lively, good looking girl’. she’s remembered as an attractive hero, making him look worse.

Question 10

describe sheila’s story:

Answer 10

• she’s shown a photograph, and she recognises the woman she got sacked from Milwards.
• insecure and jealous, thinks eva was laughing at her.
• as a regular customer from good family, had power to demand eva be sacked. she abused her influence.
• ‘felt rotten about it at the time’. she knows she behaved badly, she’s grown up since then. she’s a forgivable character.

Question 11

describe sheila and eric’s responses to Birling and Sheila’s stories:

Answer 11

• sympathetic. give emotional responses. parents show no sympathy.
• he points out hypocrisy of workers asking for higher wages when company try for as high prices as possible.
• sheila told to leave the room - stays because she feels it’s her duty to find who’s responsible. (they think young women shouldn’t here this. she thinks for herself and breaks from tradition).

Question 12

describe Eva’s name change:

Answer 12

• after being sacked, changed her name. ‘daisy renton’.
• needed dramatic change to escape past? inspector spinning tale to link two women?
• fresh sounding name for fresh start. ‘under the daisies’ - euphemism for being dead. ‘renting’ - prostitution.
• gerald recognises the name.

Question 13

describe gerald’s confession:

Answer 13

• sheila questions him.
• he says the affair was ‘over and done with last summer’ - he says they should keep it secret so it doesn’t become a scandal.
• sheila knows the inspector knows. they become anxious and suspicious, heightening the tension. worried about ‘how much he knows that we don’t know yet’.
• inspector looks in ‘searchingly’ as if he can read their expressions. ‘well?’ - confirms he’s in control, expects something from them.

Question 14

go more in-depth on gerald’s confession:

Answer 14

• considered okay for men to have affairs and mistresses, but it’s unacceptable for sheila to have a lover.
• after his confession, sheila looks at him ‘almost in triumph’ - she believes the inspector is aware of the affair.
• hints at her anger towards gerald. she’s pleased he’ll be judged by the inspector, regardless of the potential consequences (wedding, reputation).
• sheila has already chosen to side with the inspector.

Question 15

describe gerald’s story:

Answer 15

• ignores inspector’s question and says sheila is being ‘hysterical’. he’s trying to get her to leave so she doesn’t hear more about the affair.
• he tells the others about his affair. he defends it, but Mrs Birling is shocked - she doesn’t understand the concept of ‘women of the town’ (prostitutes), and is upset to hear of the affair.
• he was daisy’s love, a ‘wonderful Fairy Prince’. he didn’t love her back, but ‘adored’ being loved by her.
• he finished with eva, and even gave her money but made her homeless. she went to a seaside place to remember their time together, ‘just to make it last longer’. for him, it was a summer fling, but for her ‘there’d never be anything as good again’.

Question 16

what is the hypocrisy in gerald and him shooing sheila from the room?

Answer 16

thinking that women should be ‘protected’ when it’s men like him who took advantage of daisy renton, who wasn’t protected. shows hypocrisy of upper class, who twist the rules to suit themselves.

Question 17

describe sheila breaking off the engagement:

Answer 17

• gerald should have confessed months ago. he’d said he was too busy at work - he lied.
• she’d ‘have to start all over again, getting to know each other’. although she’s dazzled by the ring, she’s mature enough to realise the consequences of marrying a liar.
• birling defends gerald, ‘you must understand that a lot of young men-‘ (have mistresses). he wants the business deal to stay.
• gerald doesn’t ask birling for permission to leave, he asks the inspector, showing the shift in control.

Question 18

describe sybil’s reaction to her story:

Answer 18

• pretends doesn’t recognise photograph.
• won’t accept ‘blame for it at all’ when story is pressed out of her.
• can’t empathise with eva. so obsessed with social class and wealth, doesn’t recognise connections between her life and others.

Question 19

what is sybil’s story?

Answer 19

• persuades committee to turn down eva. 1) eva said her name was mrs birling. ‘piece of gross impertinence’ (rude) for eva to associate her scandal with the birling name.
  2) she’d changed her story - husband left her pregnant, then said she’s unmarried.
• she’d said it’s ‘ridiculous’ that a girl of ‘that sort’ would refuse money. class prejudice.
• sybil’s attempts to preserve her reputation contrasts with eva’s morals. eva wouldn’t marry the father as he was a ‘youngster - silly and wild and drinking too much’, he didn’t love her, the money he’d given her was stolen.

Question 20

describe sybil not taking responsibility:

Answer 20

• realises she can blame the father instead of admitting her own guilt.
• starts to tell everyone how she thinks the ‘young man’ should be punished. ‘very severely’ before making him ‘confess in public his responsibility’.
• blames the father for getting involve with a girl from a different class. assumes she wouldn’t know a man who drinks and steals.
• inspector doesn’t intervene, lets her walk straight into the trap (punishing her own son).
• sheila guesses that the ‘young man’ may be eric. ‘No, he’s giving us the rope - so that we’ll hang ourselves’. Mrs birling dismisses her as over-excited.

Question 21

describe sheila understanding what’s going on at the end of act 2:

Answer 21

• sheila has matured - very different from well-behaved and blushing bride-to-be of act 1. recognised she’d changed when she handed the ring back to gerald: they weren’t ‘the same people who sat down to dinner’.
• determined and stubborn. her parents use stubbornness to resist inspector, she uses it to seek out the truth.
• she demands that gerald and sybil answer the inspector’s questions, and tells birling not to interefer when he’s defending the idea of young men sleeping around.

Question 22

describe eric’s entrance at the end of act 2:

Answer 22

• looks ‘extremely pale and distressed’.
• been absent for most of play. always running away from family and their expectations of him.
• act 2 finishes with cliffhanger. audience is left wondering whether eric was the ‘drunken young idler’ who got eva pregnant.

Question 23

describe eric’s confession at the start of act 3:

Answer 23

• he’s ready to confess. he’s realised everyone knows he’s the father.
• he was drunk, and forced her to have sex with him. he said he’d cause a ‘row’ if she didn’t let him in her flat.
• he regrets his actions, but his language shows his immaturity. ‘good sport’ and ‘pretty’. it sounds insensitive considered how bad he treated her. he said she treated him like a ‘kid’.
• he doesn’t understand how middle class men are supposed to behave. his parents think he was worse than gerald, who knows how to have an affair without scandal.

Question 24

describe the Birlings’ reaction to Eric’s confession:

Answer 24

• starts to take situation seriously. his son has stolen money from the company, and Birling needs to ‘cover this up’ ASAP.
• Arthur orders the women to leave.
• Eric’s involvement has gone too far for the Birlings. he’d have an illegitimate child with a prostitute, which would bring shame on the family.
• sybil and sheila return as sybil ‘had to know what’s happening’ - she disobeys her husband now she realises her deep involvement in the story.
• sybil was involved in eva’s death, and when eric finds out, he’s furious. ‘you don’t understand anything. you never did’ - he linked this to his childhood.

Question 25

describe:
- the theme of family life at the start of act 3
- the turning point at the start of act 3

Answer 25

• sybil has kept a polite household and a perfect reputation for the family, but at the cost of a close and understanding relationship with her children.
• every member of the family has let down their defences, ready for the inspector’s speech.

Question 26

describe the inspector’s speech:

Answer 26

• inspector sums up how each person played their part in eva’s death (sybil refused her a ‘pitiable little bit of organised charity’).
• links eva to ‘the millions of eva smiths and john smiths’ - the rest of society/humanity.
• everyone is ‘intertwined’ and ‘members of one body’. everyone shares ‘their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness’.
• if people don’t learn to be more responsible, they’ll be forced to understand their mistakes through ‘fire, blood, and anguish’. the inspector is foreseeing all the suffering that comes from selfishness, such as the world wars.

Question 27

describe the collapse of the Birling family structure after the Inspector’s speech:

Answer 27

• Birling immediately blames Eric for their problems. decline from the inspector’s moral speech to petty squabbling.
• Birling doesn’t want anything to change. he’s desperate to get things back to the way they were, when he was in charge.
• sybil tells eric she’s ‘absolutely ashamed’ of his drinking.
• eric says he’s ashamed of his parents’ actions.
• sheila says she’s ashamed of her own actions. she shoulders the blame, and encourages everyone else to do the same.
• the parents haven’t learnt a thing. they’re more focused on trying to keep it all within the family, to avoid a shameful scandal.
• Birling says he’s ‘learnt plenty’, but not about how and why’s he’s wrong. he’s learnt how eric and sheila really behave and think.

Question 28

describe the revelation that the inspector may not be real:

Answer 28

• sybil and arthur agree that it makes ‘all the difference’, if it wasn’t a real police visit.
• sheila and eric disagree - it doesn’t matter if the inspector was fake if what he’s shown them is true.

Question 29

describe gerald’s return at the end of act 3:

Answer 29

• he’s found out there’s no inspector goole on the force. birling calls the police station to confirm that there’s no goole, and starts to think of it as a hoax, with him as the victim.
• sybil rewrites her role, says she’s proud she ‘didn’t give in to him’.
• gerald says the pics may have been of different girls. calls the hospital, confirms there’s been no suicide - Birling is relieved, considers himelf guilt-free.
• Gerald tells sheila ‘everything’s all right now’, while offering her the ring, and she says it’s ‘too soon’ to be thinking about that and to forget everything.
• gerald, sybil, and arthur are relaxed and joking. it’s almost like a happy ending. full circle moment (like it was at beginning).

Question 30

describe the final revelation in act 3:

Answer 30

• the news arrives with the same accuracy as the inspector’s arrival.
• the inspector arrived after birling says ‘a man has to mind his own business’. the inspector’s message was social responsibility.
• at the end, the phone rings just after birling laughs at ‘the famous younger generation who know it all’. birling still thinks he knows it all - he hasn’t learnt the inspector’s lesson.
• a girl has died at the infirmary, and an inspector will call.