An Inspector Calls

• Seven deadly sins


  • Envy
  • Gluttony
  • Greed/Avarice
  • Lust
  • Pride
  • Sloth
  • Wrath
• Priestley attaches the seven sins to the characters to talk about Christian morality, as 80% of his audience went to church weekly
• Greed/Avarice


  The desire to have an item or experience that someone else possesses
• Gluttony


  Excessive consumption of food or drink
• Lust


  Intense sexual desire
• Pride


  Excessive self-esteem or self-importance
• Sloth


  Laziness
• Wrath


  Extreme anger
• Priestley uses the seven sins to show that to be a capitalist is to behave in an anti-Christian manner, and that to be a good Christian, one must also be a socialist
• Inspector: 'We are all members of one body'
• Priestley's audience would have understood this Christian message, as they would have heard it in church services
• Priestley uses the notion of free will, as in the story of Adam and Eve, to say the audience can change their behaviour by voting for a socialist government
• Priestley uses literary allusion, referencing Dickens' A Christmas Carol, to teach a strong message
• Didactic


  Teaching a strong message
• Morality tale


  A story that teaches good morals
• Inspector Goole


  Parallel to the ghosts in A Christmas Carol, teaching the Birlings about the future
• Priestley uses the detective story format, but subverts it to make it a morality tale about consequences
• Tragedy


  • Unified plot, action in 24 hours, unity of place
  • Symbolic events representing tragedies of World Wars
  • Death, hamartia (fatal flaw), civilian tragedy of Titanic
• Capitalism


  A system where businesses make money for their owners, the rich, who earn dividends taxed at a lower rate than wages
• Socialism


  A system where businesses are owned by the government, profits are used for public services and welfare, not private wealth
• Priestley believes capitalism is immoral and anti-Christian, while socialism is moral and Christian
• Priestley, as the son of a teacher, uses a didactic approach to teach the audience his moral and political message
• Didactic


  Teaching explicitly
• Priestley's message is that we are all responsible for everything that happened to everyone
• Inspector


  A teacher in this play, not just there to discover what happened but to train the Birlings and the audience in what to think
• Birling says how he chooses to run his business is not relevant


  Inspector replies that it might be because business and capitalism is affecting everybody
• Inspector: 'It is better to ask for the earth than to take it'
• Capitalism


  Portrayed as theft, stealing something that doesn't belong to them
• Eric has stolen 50 pounds from his father's business, more than he could have given to Eva
• Inspector accuses Eric of theft


  Eric represents capitalism, Priestley's purpose is to show that all capitalism is stealing money from the poor
• Capitalists don't view their taking of profits as a crime, they view it as the natural order of things
• Edna, the one working class person, announces the arrival of the Inspector, showing her importance
• Patriarchal society


  • Men have significant power, women are excluded from power, society is run for the benefit of men by men
• In a patriarchal and capitalist society, daughters can be bought and sold like capitalist goods
• Birling is selling off his daughter Sheila to Gerald
• Birling is not critical of Gerald's affairs with women, expects Sheila to just put up with it
• Priestley wants to teach a feminist viewpoint, show the equality of women, and encourage women to vote socialist
• War seems like a masculine capitalist solution to society's problems, men will see war as a solution whereas women would be more reluctant
• Capitalists made huge profits from the First World War, engineering it to stop labour troubles
• Priestley campaigned against war, saw capitalism and war as connected