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Mindmap von Axel Blaze, aktualisiert more than 1 year ago
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Erstellt von Axel Blaze
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An Inspector Calls -
By Keshav Vaisnav
- Capitalism Arthur Priestley: The insult of Russia is important. When he finished
writing An Inspector Calls in 1944 Priestley sent the script to Moscow, as there
were no theatres available in London at that time. He did this not just because
Russia's capital had a vibrant theatre scene, but because he knew that a play
that praised socialism and attacked capitalism would be very popular in the
world's first and largest - and at that time only - communist state.
- Proletariat: The lower class, also known as the working class or (in Marxist
terminology) the proletariat. In pre-industrial times this group consisted
almost entirely of peasants - poor agricultural labourers who worked for the
landed gentry. When the Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century,
many peasants moved to the cities and became factory labourers. By the mid
19th century, this group, like the cities in which they lived and worked, had
become enormous. When in 1848 the German economic theorists Karl Marx and
Frederich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, a book that describes
the injustice of rich factory owners exploiting factory workers, many members
of this new proletariat, first in Europe and eventually around the world, began
demanding fairer pay, safer conditions and shorter working hours, amongst
other reforms. Eva Smith is a member of this class.
- Dramatic irony: his is particularly evident in Birling’s speech es at the beginning
of the play when he makes pronouncements about war, the state of the na tion
in 30 years’ time and, more immediately, the unsinkable nature of the Titanic;
compare this appa rent foolishness with the inspector’s talk of ‘bloo d and
anguish’. An audience seeing this immediately afte r the second world war with
knowledge of the first war would think of Birling as a fool and the inspector as a
prophet
- Bourgeoisie: Within An Inspector Calls Priestly suggests that the society of
1912's industrialism was unjust, being skewed in the favour of the capitalist
middle class. This often came at the detriment and oppression of the working
labour force whose lives were dictated by the whims of the upper class and the
oscillation of the price market. Mr Birling is placed in the role of bourgeoisie
and presented with a cold unfeeling approach to social responsibility. He
refused Eva Smith a small pay increase that would of 'added about 12 percent to
our labour costs'.
- Status: Apart from Edna the maid, the cast of the play does not include any
lower class characters. We see only the rich, upwardly mobile Birlings and the
upper class Gerald Croft. Yet we learn a lot about the lower class as we hear of
each stage in Eva's life and we see the attitude the Birlings had for them.
Because Eva was a woman - in the days before women were valued by society
and had not yet been awarded the right to vote - she was in an even worse
position than a lower class man. Even upper class women had few choices. For
most, the best they could hope for was to impress a rich man and marry well -
which could explain why Sheila spent so long in Milwards
- Younger generation: One of the reasons the Birling family falls apart so
dramatically and acrimoniously is they live in a time (1912) when the
young generation was beginning to shun the attitudes of its elders. We
often pinpoint the 1960s as the time when morals and values changed
irreversibly, but this great cultural shift was part of a process that began
in earnest in the second decade of the 20th century. In the Birling family,
Eric and Sheila clash with their parents because of their different dialects
and vocabulary, their polarised ideas of relationships and marriage and,
most pointedly, in their attitude towards socialism
- Responsibility: The words responsible and responsibility are used by most
characters in the play at some point. Each member of the family has a different
attitude to responsibility. Make sure that you know how each of them felt
about their responsibility in the case of Eva Smith. The Inspector wanted each
member of the family to share the responsibility of Eva's death: he tells them,
""each of you helped to kill her."" However, his final speech is aimed not only at
the characters on stage, but at the audience too. The Inspector is talking about a
collective responsibility, everyone is society is linked, in the same way that the
characters are linked to Eva Smith. Everyone is a part of ""one body"", the
Inspector sees society as more important than individual interests. The views
he is propounding are like those of Priestley who was a socialist.
- Omniscient-Inspector Goole: He is very single-minded and seems very certain
of himself and his facts. He also seems to be omniscient [all7knowing] and
Sheila is the one who recognises this most. He is a catalyst who seems able to
get characters to reveal their involvement with Eva Smith because he seems to
already know what they are going to say. Some critics have argued that he is like
a confessor figure with the characters revealing their sins to him just as they
might to a priest.
- Socialism: Socialism is political and economic theory that, in some ways, is the
opposite of capitalism. It is based on the empowerment of a society's workers -
the people who make and manufacture goods - and the idea that the
community as a whole owns and regulates the means of production,
distribution and exchange. Eva Smith, a worker, is mistreated first by her
capitalist boss (Arthur Biring) in a classic "Capital versus Labour" dispute. From
there, she suffers four further injustices that give a very negative impression of
capitalism. In his final speech, the Inspector warns that it is only through
socialism ("one body") that mankind can hope to prevent such tragedy in the
future.
- 1912 Views on Women: In 1912, the year An Inspector Calls is set, the group
switched to more militant tactics, including chaining themselves to buildings,
setting fire to postboxes and smashing windows. On the 4th of June, 1913, an
activist named Emily Davison died when she threw herself in front of the horse
of King George V at the Epsom Derby. For these and many other acts of civil
disobedience, over a thousand women were imprisoned. Once there, many
went on hunger strike to protest against their treatment.
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