Zusammenfassung der Ressource
An Inspector Calls
- Mr Birling
- "If we were all responsible for everything that happened to everybody we'd had anything to do with, it
would be very awkward"
- Doesn't want to take responsibility for his actions or involvement in Eva's death
- "I speak as a hard headed business man"
- "Look at the way he spoke to me"
- "Look inspector, I'd give thousands..."
- "The famous younger generation who know it all"
- "I say there isn't a chance of war"
- Dramatic Irony Mr Birling is shown as ignorant
as war breaks out 2 years after the play is set
(1914)
- "A man has to mind his own business and look after
himself and his own"
- "There'll be a public scandal"
- "By Jingo! A fake!"
- Inspector Goole
- "We don't live alone upon this earth. We
are responsible for each other"
- "Each of you helped kill her"
- "Fire and blood and anguish"
- "Public men, Mr Birling, have
responsibilities as well as privileges"
- Undermining Mr Birling's privileges (wealth, money
status...) His responsibilities are being challenged
- "One person and one line of enquiry at a time"
- "If there's nothing else, we will have to share our guilt"
- "It would do us all a bit of good if sometimes we tried to put ourselves in
place of these young women counting our pennies"
- "If you're easy with me then I'm
easy with you"
- "It's my duty to ask questions"
- "One Eva Smith has gone but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smith's and John
Smith's still left with us, with their lives and hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of
happiness, all intertwined with our lives, with what we think aand say and do"
- "It's better to ask for the earth than to take it"
- Showing Mr Birling's hypocrisy as he was
trying to take from the working class
without asking
- Eric Birling
- "You're not the kind of father a chap could go to when he's in trouble"
- "That doesn't matter to me"
- "It's still the same rotten story"
- "I am ashamed of you"
- "Why shouldn't they try for higher wages?"
- Mrs Birling
- "You're quite wrong to suppose I shall regret
what I did"
- "Girls of that class"
- She
believes
that she
is so
superior
- "I did nothing I'm ashamed of"
- Refuses to take responsibility for her actions
- "Arthur, you're not supposed to say such things"
- "The things you girls pick up these days"
- Sheila Birling
- "Last summer, when you never came near me"
- "But these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people"
- Starting to question her beliefs and what her father taught her
- "I'm sorry daddy"
- "Between us, we drove that girl to commit suicide"
- "We really must stop these silly pretences"
- "It frightens me the way you talk"
- "I suppose we are all nice people now"
- Gerald Croft
- "Everything's all right now, Sheila"
- "You couldn't have done anything else"
- "You seem like a nice well behaved family"
- Theme of appearances is shown here
- "We've been had"
- "I don't come into this suicide business"
- "We're respectable citizens not criminals"