AIC themes

• Morality play 


  Written to explain the morals of the bible. It would take on the 7 deadly sins: Envy, gutting, greed, lust, pride, sloth, wrath. Priestley attaches these factors onto some of the characters. Priestley's purpose in using these sins is to show to be a capitalist you're actually behaving in an anti-christian manner and therefore to be a good member of society you must be a socialist
• Genesis and free will


  Story of Genesis is the first story in the Bible. It is about Adam and Eve and they exercise their freewill to go against god and Priestley says the same as there church that we all have free will and you can change your behaviour and one of the ways you can do this is is to vote for a socialist government. As the play is first written and performed in 1945 which was the year of the general election which sees the conservatives defeated and replaced by a labour government so Priestley is very much writing about the politics of his time.
• Use of literary allusion

  calling the inspector 'Gool' taps into his audience's collective knowledge of A Christmas Carol. It is a didactic text or morality tale. In A Christmas Carol the ghosts were there to teach the protagonists which shows the parallel between An Inspector Calls and A Christmas Carol. Priestley emphasises his message by using the same dramatic device Dicken's used when he created Scrooge.
• Literary allusion: detective story 


  For the first two acts, we can be confident that we are in the plot of a mystery like 'Murder on the Orient Express' by Agatha Christie in 1934. Priestley uses the same dramatic techniques as Christie and the audience would be able to see this parallel. And this is Priestley's message, all the Birlings and Gerald have conspired to create a set of circumstances that would lead to Eva's death. They are all responsible. It is more than a 'Whodunit' tale it is a morality tale or a political tale
• Tragedy

  Priestley uses tragedy deliberately and he follows Aristotle's rules called Poetics: the play should have a unified plot, happen in one day and happen in a single place. The reason Priestley does that is to show that this is a tragedy and his wider political purpose to demonstrate that the political situation is a tragedy for the working classes that is the didactic purpose. He also uses tragedy as symbolic. Eva's first death and then her second death is symbolic of WW1 and WW2.
• Tragedy 


  Eva herself is also a symbol over the whole working class. He is writing about a society which exploits the poor so much that is will send them off to war. The use of symbolism of the Titanic which Priestley uses to symbolise the sinking of the Upper classes, represents the capitalists who are destroying themselves through their addiction to capitalism and luxury
• Capitalism 


  It is the fundamental injustice about how a capitalist society is organised that Priestley objects to
• Socialism 


  Priestley believes that capitalism was immoral and anti-christian and they socialism was a moral way of behaviour and was Christian so he presents his play as a way of teaching morality
• Inspector as a teacher

  Priestley is a teacher through his play and this links to the fact that his father was a teacher so he is used tot thinking in this didactic way. The inspector is didactic. Priestley portrays the capitalists a thieves and they are taking parts of society that don't belong to them
• Capitalism as theft 


  Eric represents capitalism because of his theft from his father. Priestley's purpose is to show that all capitalism is stealing money from the poor. Eric initially denies he steals the money, this detail symbolises how capitalists don't few their taking of profits as crime they view is as the natural order. There is justification is the capitalist system according to Priestley which is a lie it is really stealing
• The oppressed but deserving working class

  The inspector is the side of the oppressed working class. He shows this by getting Edna, nothing working class member to announce the arrival of the Inspector so they are linked. Edna also has words that are virtually the play's title she says 'An Inspector's called'. Priestley does this deliberately to show the importance of Edna's words because the play is there to represent her and the oppression of her class.
• The oppressed by deserving working class

  Edna also leaves but it is symbolic of the ignorance of the capitalists, she leave to reflect the lack of importance that she has in the lives of the rich and it's the lack of importance the Priestley is attacking, he gives Edna a voice through the Inspector's voice
• Patriarchy 


  Priestley says society is wrong because it is capitalist but it is also wrong because it is a patriarchy. Daughters has such a lack of importance that they could be seen of a property so in a patriarchal and capitalist society daughters get converted into property so they can be bought and sold like capitalist goods. Birling is selling off his daughter to create a more prosperous business.
• Patriarchy 


  Priestley attacks the patriarchy by looking at Birling as a father and states that he totally unsuitable because he is willing to exploit his daughter and he makes that strong link between exploiting her for business and exploiting her sexually. So when he hears about Gerald's sexual infidelity he thinks that Shelia should just put up with it
• Patriarchal society: Feminist message 


  Being written in 1945, it was quite early to have a feminist message. All the women in Priestley's audience would have had the right to vote but when the play was set in 1912 they couldn't vote, so Priestley wants women to start thinking about exercising this right to vote and to do it in a socialist way. He is praying on a mouldable audience whose inexperience in politics he can bend into a socialist citizen.
• Patriarchal society: Feminist viewpoint

  He teaches the feminist viewpoint. If he focused on a poorer men narrative he would not be able to point out the sexual exploration of patriarchal society and he wants to showcase that so he can say to his female audience if they want a fairer society they had to vote socialist.
• Capitalism = patriarchy = war 


  he wants to write a feminist play because in a patriarchal society war seems like a good idea, it is a masculine capitalist solution to society's problems. Priestley's use of the noun 'men' in the Inspectors find speech doesn't just mean mankind, he is pointing out that men are the problem because men have the capitalist power they will see war as a solution to society's problems
• Birling and Capitalism as profiteers from war

  Priestley is showing that Birling and other capitalists like him made huge amounts of profit from war. One way to look at the war is capitalists engineering going to war in 1914 in order to keep everybody at work and making money for big business because they stopped striking when the men went to war. Priestley's description of Mr Birling echos Sir Stanley Baldwin, Prime minister 3 times between the two world wars. He said 'Hard-faced men who had done well out of the war' inn order to attack the capitalists who had made all this money.
• Birling and capitalism as profiteers from war

  Because they owned all the factories that produced all the armaments that were used in war they made huge amounts of profit. Priestley himself campaigned for the end of wars, he invented the campaign for nuclear disarmament after WW2. He was heavily anti-war and capitalist but he saw the two as connected. So if you got rid of capitalism you also got rid of war which is why it is just an anti-war play and the second death of Eva signifying WW2
• Capitalism as Exploitation

  Gerald represents the true exploitation of women. To Gerald his relationship with Eva is entirely an economic one and as soon as she starts to cost him, he gets ride of her. That is the definition of capitalism as exploitation
• Upper classes and self deception and sophistry

  Priestley also opposes to capitalists is that they deceive themselves that they are not exploiting people - sophistry. Morally all of the characters have committed the same sins they confessed to but Gerald pretends that is does matter if it is the same girl that is the example of sophistry. Gerald denies that fact that is must be the same girl to give the upper classes symbolised by Birling and Mrs Birling to opportunity to pretend that they are not exploiting people
• Capitalism and the failure of the younger generation

  Shelia learning the socialist lesson isn't enough and Priestley shows this because she is a woman and in 1912, she doest even have the vote so she doesn't have any political influence and in a patriarchal society she doesn't have any influence over business so therefore she cannot change society no matter what happens.
• Capitalism and the failure of the younger generation

  Although she has learnt Priestley lesson the probability she will accept Gerald is high because society is patriarchal and loaded against her she'll probably still be a victim of it, she will probably still accept Gerald because any upper class man that she marries will be exactly like him because she needs to obtain social and economical security.
• Capitalism and the failure of the younger generation

  Eric is symbolic of the capitalists because he is lying to himself and everything he tells us at the end of the play is when he is drunk. So Priestley is saying that even Eric, the young rich who might see a better way of behaving still wouldn't because when he is sober and reality sinks in they will still be capitalists like their parents.
• The importance of Characters names

  Daisy - uprooted, innocent, beautiful, dying

  Renton - For rent

  Eva - Eve (and Adam)

  Gerald - rule of the spear

  Arthur - King, Albion

  Eric - comes from a viking works meaning 'ever, alway and ruler'

  Shelia - latin name comes from Cecilia, symbolic for the feminine form for 'blind'

  Sybil - female prophets looked up to for divine knowledge - irony

  Goole - homophone
• Priestley's choice of the textile industry

  There were 3 textile companies which were in the top 98 largest industrial companies in the word in 1912. The 3rd largest was a British textile firm called 'J and P Coats' you can see the common name between 'Coats' and 'Crofts' all the audience would have been able to recognise this similarity 'Coats' was also owned by a rich family just like 'Crofts'
• Priestley's choice of the textile industry

  So it is easy for the audience at the time to realise that Gerald's business doesn't just represent the rich it represents the super wealthy companies such as 'Coats' the industry that has controlled the country in many ways and has been in a massive decline by 1945.