Revision Flashcards
What are the Birlings’ children called?
Eric and Shiela
Where is the play set?
In the Birlings’ house in Brumley.
What is the listing technique used by the Inspector when he says ‘millions and millions and millions’ and ‘fire and blood’ and anguish’? Why does Priestley use this technique?
Polysyndeton. The extra conjunctions add emphasis to the items on the list. In the first example, Priestley wants to illustrate how many people are disadvantaged by capitalism, in the second example, the polysyndeton stresses the gravity of the emotive metonyms that the Inspector suggests are caused by social injustice.
How is the lighting described as being prior to the Inspector’s arrival?
Pink and intimate.
According to the stage directions what should the lighting change to on the Inspector’s arrival?
‘brighter and harder’
Give three quotations that exemplify Mr Birling’s flawed opinions by using dramatic irony.
- ‘unsinkable,absolutely unsinkable’
- ‘it’ll make war impossible’
- ‘you’ll be living in a world that will have forgotten all these Capital versus Labour agitations’
Sheila - (half serious, half playful) Yes - except for all last summer, when you never came near me, and I wondered what had happened to you.
Name the structural/dramatic device that Priestley employs in this quotation.
Foreshadowing
Name the device:
“One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us…”
Contrastive pair.
Tricolon.
Polysyndeton.
From the Inspector’s final speech.
“We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.”
Anaphora
Repetition
Use of first person plural pronouns.
From the Inspector’s final speech.
“But the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you’d think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed up like bees in a hive - community and all that nonsense.”
Insult
Simile
Foreshadowing
Mr Birling before the Inspector’s arrival.
Year the play is set.
1912 - before the first world war and the millions of deaths it caused.
Year the play was first performed in England.
1946 - after the second world war when people wanted a fairer society and just three months after a Labour election win that promised a new NHS.
Location of the first performance.
Moscow - the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The play has a strong socialist message about cooperation that was well-received in Moscow.
Year of its first performance.
1945 (Moscow)
Birling’s ‘crime’.
Sacked her for being a spokesperson for the striking workers in his factory. They wanted a pay raise of 10% on their wages of 25 shillings a week. He claims that Eva had had ‘far to much to say for herself’ even though he admits that she was a ‘good worker’ who’d been promoted to ‘lead operative’. He later says that he would ‘give thousands, yes thousands’ to avoid her death. He then goes on to say that Eric will pay back ‘every penny’ of the £50 he stole from the company to help Daisy when she was pregnant with Eric’s child.
