Quotes

• "good solid furniture... champagne glasses... port... evening dress"

  • stage directions at the beginning of Act 1
  • creates a sense of luxury
  • prompts the audience to form an impression of the characters from the beginning
  • we expect upper-class characters to be arrogant or ignorant
  • 1945 audience would be especially cautious after the wars and the rise of the welfare state in the UK
• "pink and intimate"


  • Act 1 stage directions
  • referencing the lighting
  • the audience see the world through the rose-tinted glasses that the Birlings have on
• "in 1940... you'll be living in a world that'll have forgotten all these silly little Capital versus Labour agitations"

  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • dramatic irony
  • "agitations"
  • begins to turn the audience against him as they know the weight of his words even if he doesn't
• "silly little war scares"

  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • dramatic irony
  • Birling crudely dismisses war
  • turns the audience against him as they recall the horrors that he is dismissing as "silly"
• "the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you'd think everybody has to look after everybody else" 


  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • dramatic irony
  • marks Birling out as an unsympathetic man
  • "cranks"
  • uses insulting words to belittle anyone who disagrees with him
• "The Titanic - she sails next week - forty-six thousand tons... New York in five days"


  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • he quotes the Titanic as a mark of human progress
  • dramatic irony
  • the audience knows what will happen
  • Priestley uses the Titanic as a symbol for Capitalist ideals
  • represents strength, luxury and progress - and the unfortunate end it met shows how Priestley feels about the system
• "unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable"

  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • dramatic irony
  • shows the audience what happened to Birling's perfect example of human progress
• "a man has to make his own way"

  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • reinforcing patriarchal values
  • showing how highly Mr Birling thinks of himself
• "the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you'd think everybody has to look after everybody else"


  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • "cranks"
  • repetition
  • reinforcing his dismissal of anyone with different opinions to him
  • dissmissive
  • he immediately disregards the ideas of anyone else
  • narrow-minded
• "as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive - community and all that nonsense" 


  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • "nonsense"
  • almost like he sees himself as above caring for others
  • he rejects his responsibility for other people
  • "like bees in a hive"
  • similie
  • animalistic
  • Birling's attempt to portray socialism as primitive and demeaning
• "he creates at once an impression of massiveness"


  • stage directions, Act 1
  • referring to the Inspector
  • shows that he is taking the power away from Birling and Gerald
• "I was an alderman for years - and Lord Mayor two years ago"

  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • uses his status and reputation to try and intimidate and win over the Inspector
  • Priestley's way of setting up how people in power constantly use their privelige to evade responsibility
• "Burnt her inside out, of course."

  • The Inspector, Act 1
  • emotive, graphic language
  • contrasts with the euphemisms used by the upper class later
  • blunt, straightforward way of speaking
  • foreshadows his blunt methods of getting to the truth
  • combats the way that the upper classes try and distance themselves from their actions
• "Because what happened to her then may have determined what happened to her afterwards... a chain of events"


  • The Inspector, Act 1
  • sets up the chain of actions and consequences that define the play
  • Priestley, through the Inspector, demonstrates how all actions have consequences
  • "chain of events"
  • metaphor
  • connotations of imprisonment
  • our duty to other people is something we can't escape
  • "determined"
  • controlled by an outside force
  • people have little control over how society treats them
• "Still, I can't accept any responsibility"

  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • he is refusing to listen to the Inspector
  • "can't"
  • implies something in his nature prevents him from taking responsibility
  • shows his self-absorbed worldview
• "If we were all responsible for... everybody we'd had anything to do with, it would be very awkward, wouldn't it?"

  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • shows his selfish attidude
  • "awkward"
  • shows how he chooses not to care for others because it is an inconvenience for him
• "It's better to ask for the Earth than to take it"

  • The Inspector, Act 1
  • directly defying Mr Birling's words
  • cements the Inspector's anti-capitalist beliefs
• "Oh, I wish you hadn't told me"

  • Sheila, Act 1
  • shows her naive attitude towards the world
  • sets up her character development later
• "Now, Inspector, perhaps you and I had better go and talk this over quietly in a corner"


  • Mr Birling, Act 1
  • shows how obsessed Birling is with his image
  • he cares more about keeping his reputation clean than about the people who work for him
  • Birling expects to be able to use his money and power to exempt himself from consequences
• "But these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people"

  • Sheila, Act 1
  • she immediately understands what the Inspector is telling her
  • directly contradicts her fater's beliefs
  • can be seen as Priestley exposing the hypocricy of the upper classes
• "That's more or less what I was thinking... A nice promising little life there... and a nasty mess somebody's made of it"

  • The Inspector, Act 1
  • directly challenges the Birlings
  • refuses to accept their authority
  • "somebody's made"
  • shows how he refuses to believe that the suicide was solely down to Eva herself
• "You see, we have to share something. If there's nothing else, we'll have to share our guilt"

  • The Inspector, Act 2
  • Theme - social responisbility
  • the idea of sharing reinforces Priestley's socialist values