AN INSPECTOR CALLS
- Created by: bronteappleby
- Created on: 20-03-14 08:37
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- Themes of "An Inspector Calls"
- Responsibility
- Inspector wants everybody to feel responsible
- "Each of you helped to kill her" - The Inspector
- Inspectors final soliloquy about responsibility is aimed at the Audience to
- Collective Responsibility
- "All intertwined with each other"
- Society is more important than Individual Needs
- Priestly was a socialist, this is very typical of his views
- Birling fired her, this limits her very slim opportunities
- Social Class and Status
- We don't actually see any lower class characters apart from Edna the maid but we learn a lot about them...what does this say about society?
- Eva who is lower class seems to be much more morally right than any of the characters at the start of the play.
- Gerald has the highest status out of all the characters
- They all treat the lower class with respect
- The 'Palace Variety Theatre' was not a respectable place for the upper class yet that was where Gerald and Eric met Eva
- Mr Birling is to be knighted but he treats the lower class as cheap labour
- Sheila spends a lot of time shopping and fires people out of spite showing her class and status and that she's superior to the lower class and has a say
- Gerald marries someone of a lower class despite his social situation and discards his mistress at will
- Eric is awkward about his status but he uses Eva as drunken sex and then his consequences do not really affect him but only Eva
- Mrs Birling has a higher status than her husband but is still rude to Eva
- Sex and Gender
- Women's rights
- Eva was not valued because she was a woman and stood up for what was right
- Would've that happened if she was a man?
- Upper Class Women don't have many rights - Sheila's only job is to impress Gerald
- Is that why she is so upset when the affair between Eva and Gerald comes up?
- She goes to Milwards often enough to have some say in how the business is run (hand in hand with her class)
- Eva didn't have very many options in the end because she was a woman
- Both of the Birling's in the older generation have negative attitudes towards Feminism
- Gerald sees Eva as something "fresh" - as something to exploit because she is a woman
- Age
- Older characters set in their ways and refuse to change
- Eric and Sheila (the younger characters) are open and accepting to new ideas of change
- The older characters do not examine their conscience while the younger ones do and show remorse for Eva
- Older characters will do anything to protect themselves while the younger ones accept their faults and try to redeem their selves
- Older and younger contrast each other
- Gerald sides with the younger generation due to his aristocratic background
- The change of the younger characters mean is symbolic that there is hope for the future
- Responsibility
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