'Heavy - looking man, rather
portentous man in his
middle fifties with fairly
easy manners but rather
provincial in his speech.'
Description of Arthur,
which already shows
his posture.
'Heavy - looking' not only
describe his shape (slightly
overweight), but also shows
that he weight/ value his own
opinion than facts.
Page 2
'He push it towards Eric' (the port)
Clearly Arthur doesn't realize
what problems his son have,
this also prove his words, that
a man should only care about
himself.
Page 4
To Gerald - 'Your farther and I have been friendly
rivals in business for some time now - though
Crofts Limited are both older and bigger than
Birling and Company - and now you've brought us
together, and perhaps we may look forward to
the time when Crofts and Birling are no longer
competing but are working together - for lower
costs and higher prices.
Always talk about work, even on his daughter
engagment party, in his main speech he bring
up work and how fortunate he is to be able to
bring both companies together.
page 6 / 7
'hard- headed business-man'
Birling in all his talks is
stubborn and faithful to
old ideas and not at all
keen to listen to new ones.
He believes he is practical and logical in his work.
'I say there isn't a chance
for war.' 'the Titanic... she
sails next week...forty six
thousand eight hundred
tons...and unsinkable,
absolutely unsinkable.
This show how naive Birling
is and how stubborn he
really is about what he
believes in.
page 9/10
'...a man has to take his own
way - has to look after himself -
and his family too, of course...
But the way some of those
cranks talk and
write...everybody has too look
after everybody else... all mixed
up together like bees in hive'
Birling is very selfish in his way of
being believing that all he must care
about is himself and not anybody
else. also the idea of 'bees in hive'
show that Birling strongly believe
that people of different classes
should not be together as one
community.
Page 12
'Horrid business.But I don't
understand why you should
come here...'
He clearly does not
take the responsibility
for death of Eva Smith.
This link back to his
believe the man only
should care about
himself, also as the girl
was from lower class
than he is, he consider
her as someone not
imporbtant and even
more he push the
resonsibility away from
himself.
page 13
'We've been
modestly
celebrating his
engagement to
my daughter,
Sheila'
He is always about his own life and goods, this
show how selfish and irresponsible Birling is.
page 15
'It is my duty to keep the labour cost down.'
Birling cares only
about himself,
and completely
forget about the
dead girl.
page 23
Sheial about
her farther: ' he
didn't seem to
think it
amounted to
much'
Again this shows that
Birling cannot take any
responsibility and care for
others.
page 33
' Inspector, I've told you before, I don't like your tone
nor the way you're handling this inquiry. And I don't
propose to give you much more rope.'
Birling shows that he think that because of
his higher social status he is better than
the inspector and that he is in the control
of the situation.
'giving the rope': to allow someone to
do what they want to, knowing that
they will probably fail or get into trouble