Stage Directions and Context

• Stage Direction: "Lighting should be pink and intimate... the brighter and harder"
• Stage Direction: "As they stare guilty and dumbfounded, the curtain falls"
• Set in 1912 before World War One and the sinking of the Titanic
• Priestley accepted Socialist views and values
• Priestley's message is that we all have a duty to society and it will collapse if we don't honour that duty
• Written in 1945
• In 1912 people believed that the upper classes and lower classes should not mix. This view was changed in 1945 due to the decline of the class system from the integration of upper class and lower class people during World War one and two.