Mr Birling Flashcards
‘you ought to like this port’
‘you must take a little tonight’
‘tell cook from me’
imperative sentences, commands and advises
patriarch of family, has the control
‘a man has to make his own way- has to look after himself- and his family too, of course, when he has one.’
indiviualism (capitalism), his family is a second thought, he is so selfish
‘the way some of these cranks talk’
‘cranks’ socialists, crank means somebody with weird ideas, mode of adress,
‘mixed up together like bees in a hive’
bees= socialists, they work together to make honey, bees are all the same nothing unique, lives are very plain all they do is work for queen bee.
‘mixed up’ awareness and approval of class hierarchy.
cranks, mixed up together like bees in a hive, nonsense
confident self assured tone, how strong he feels about values, conveying Mr birlings power and authority.
‘my duty is to keep labour costs down’
Jargon, unpaying, firing people, exploiting people, short sighted and unempathetic,
‘if you don’t come down sharply on some of these people they’d soon be asking for the earth’
socialists are asking for too much ‘earth’
attacking socialism, wealthy man who’s asked for the earth and got it but wants to stop others from doing what he has done.
‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable…’
dramatic irony, audience are aware of how wrong he is as they have experienced it
adverb absolutely shows the confidence along with repetition.
reminded of arrogance of a real person (creator of titanic)
‘all these capital versus labour agitations’
miner strikes in england fighting for better pay and working conditions.
fighting back from the working class
Jargon - ‘capital versus labour’
‘silly little war scares’
dramatic irony, belittles possibility of war, silly and little diminish power of war and scare.
‘peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere-except of course in Russia’
Dramatic irony, WW1 happens, Russia becomes the soviet union which is largest empire with multiple continents of influence.
what is hubris?
character trait that has excessive pride of inflated self-confidence. Consumes a character and blinds them to reason resulting on their downfall.
‘rather portentous man’
speaks the way he does to impress those around him
desperate to impress as he is not old money, not a social superior.
‘its exactly the same port your father gets’
‘juts a knighthood of course’
‘id give thousands- yes thousands’
he wants to have the privilege of the upper class, wants to be accepted into their society.
would rather protect money and power than human life
wants to suppress his issues with money like the upper class does.
How is generational conflict showed?
Shelia and Eric recognise the importance of moral integrity and responsibility, no matter what the law says, listening to human nature.
