mr birling key quotes

• ‘you’re just the kind of son-in-law I wanted.
• ‘for lower costs and higher prices’
• ‘hard-headed businessman
• 1.     ‘for a time of steadily increasing prosperity’ p6

  •   The audience know that around this time, WW1 would start in 2 years and the Titanic would sink, killing many people, with first-class passengers being evacuated first, which shows another class division in 1912.
• ‘hard-headed, practical man of business’
• 1.     ‘there isn’t a chance of war’ p6

  • Dramatic irony, there was a war that killed many, the audience would be grieving the consequences of the next one.
• ‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’

  •   The titanic did sink, contrary to popular beliefs of the time. Dramatic irony, shows the audience that Mr. Birling is terribly wrong and therefore untrustworthy so they shouldn’t support his political ideas.
• 'peace, prosperity and rapid progress everywhere’ plosives
•    Bernard Shaws and H.G. Wellses’

  Ø  Criticizes the socialists, because he is a capitalist by using famous authors of that time.
• ‘don’t get into the police or start a scandal – eh?’

  • Dramatic irony, they do get into a scandal of being involved with a working class girl's suicide, which makes it worse because they lived a much better life than hers, but ruined it anyways
• 1  ‘a man has to make his own way, has to look after himself – and his family, of course’

  • Capitalist view, selfish view.
  • He think about himself, man, first and uses man and not a general term to include women which shows the inferior role of women in society. He then think about family as an afterthought at the end.
•   ‘cranks talk and write now’

  These ‘cranks’ are socialists, who he disagrees with because then he wouldn’t be richer and have a higher social class and better reputation because socialism doesn’t allow exploitation and cheating
• ‘together like bees in a hive – community and all that nonsense’

  • Simile, bees work together in a hive to harvest honey, which is collaborative and is a small-scale view of what a socialist society would be like.
• ‘wretched girl’s suicide’

  • Talks about her like scum even if she is dead, show that working class people always get mistreated as scum no matter where they are.
•   'I can’t accept any responsibility'

  • Can’t accept it because he feels he did nothing wrong, old-generation ideas
• ‘you learned to face a few responsibilities’

  • Reprimanding Eric to face responsibilities when he can’t acknowledge and accept his own.
• 'upsetting the child like that’

  • Calls Sheila a child, although she is the same age as Eva, who he calls ‘the wretched girl’. Wants to protect her from the harms of the world like a child, not treating her like an adult.
• ‘talk to me about my responsibilities’

  • Feels angry when the Inspector tells him a public man takes care of his responsibilities.
• ‘excitable queer moods’

  • Called Eric’s drunk state ‘queer’, covering up that Eric is heavily drunk.
• 1. ‘I’d give thousands – yes, thousands –
• “the famous younger generation who know it all"