eric

01 How important is the character of Eric in demonstrating Priestley’s ideas?

Write about:

● How Eric responds to his family and the Inspector

● How Priestley presents Eric’s actions

1) at the start of the play, eric is presented as confused and unsure about his position in society

"half shy, half assertive"

- shy implies that he is nervous and childish - this is a product of the the way the older gen treated boys like eric, undermining their confidence in certain things - mr/mrs b looked down on him

- this contrasts assertive, the parallelism imlying he is confident and in charge - this paints him as trying to live up to the expectations of society on young men and trying to be everything at once

this foreshadows his predicament later, shy to admit his wrong doings however not afraid to stand up for what he belives in

- implies secretive - shows the capitalist society is not to be trusted

half repeated shows he has a long way to go, can be changed

2) right from the start, he questions mr birlings authority

- what about war?

interagatorive sentence

he is the only person to do this other than the inspecgtor, as shiela has no problem as the start

this shows that the younger generation had ideas of their own about socialism even before people like the inspector came along, they just needed something to mobilize thier actions

however, he also fuels mr birlings patriotic rants about capitalism, choosing to only object on any issues that cpould directly affect him, not the individual workers, shows he is still conditioned and selfish

- the war happened ffour…