Literature 🖋️📚Sample Answers - Literature AQA English - PLAY
Sample Answers - Literature AQA English An Inspector Calls
Sample Grade 7
Question: How does Priestley present ideas about justice in An Inspector Calls?
Write about: Examples of ideas about justice in the play how Priestley presents ideas about justice.
Priestley explores ideas about justice by showing how the fate of the poorly paid Eva Smith is in the hands of the wealthy Birlings and the aristocratic Gerald Croft. They make a series of choices, creating a ‘chain of events’ that leads to her downfall. Inspector Goole is Priestley’s mouthpiece and Priestley gives him a commanding voice as the Inspector interrogates each of the characters in turn.
The chain of events is the structure in which Priestley lays out his ideas and it begins when Mr Birling sacks Eva Smith for demanding more pay for her job at his factory. Mr Birling’s belief is that a man ‘has to look after himself – and his family’ only. In this way, Priestley shows how employers like Birling feel no obligation to the wider community and so do not give their workers fair wages.
By contrast Sheila Birling objects to her father’s attitude. She does not see employees like Eva Smith as ‘cheap labour’, but emphasises their humanity by referring to them as ‘people’. However, Priestley also makes Sheila a complicated character. Ironically, her unjust complaint at Milwards store leads to Eva Smith losing her job; the last regular job she has. When Sheila recognises her own link in the chain, she is horrified. The Inspector’s words impact on her as she realises that there are wider ideas of justice, since there are ‘millions … of Eva Smiths’ in society and that our lives are all ‘intertwined’.
Priestley shows that Gerald, Sheila’s fiancé, also has some sense of justice. When he meets Eva Smith (as Daisy Renton) in the Palace Theatre bar, he rescues her from the hands of the lecherous Alderman Meggarty who ‘had wedged her into a corner’. The verb ‘wedged’ and the noun ‘corner’ illustrate her helplessness. Nonetheless, Gerald has a hand in Eva’s downfall too, because he ends his affair with her when it suits him. His deception is also unfair to Sheila.
Eric’s encounter with Eva Smith is less gentlemanly. When drunk he ‘easily turns nasty’ and on the second meeting he doesn’t even, ‘remember her name’, creating the impression that he is thoroughly irresponsible. Although he tries to do the right thing when Eva becomes pregnant, he only makes his bad behaviour worse. He steals from his father’s firm and gives Eva the stolen money. When she discovers where it came from, she declines ‘to take anymore.’ Consequently, Priestley demonstrates that Eva, who knows right from wrong, is a just, moral person, while Eric is not. But Eric is very upset by Eva’s death. Like Sheila, he is affected by the Inspector’s warning that if the unfairness carries on it will end in ‘fire and blood and anguish’, a striking metaphor that reminds us of hellfire in the Christian religion.
Unlike Eric, Mrs Birling undergoes no change of heart and considers she did her ‘duty’ by Eva Smith. Her actions are the final link in the chain when she refuses Eva charity from the Brumley Women’s Charity Organisation. Mrs Birling’s lack of sympathy – Priestley uses the adjective ‘cold’ to describe her – and her failure to understand Eva’s position ensures Eva sinks further still, and ends by taking her own life. Priestley also explores the lack of justice (as well as irony) when Mrs Birling unwittingly helps to bring to an end her own potential grandchild; the baby Eva Smith is carrying.
Neither Mr nor Mrs Birling feels any sense of responsibility (another theme in the play connected to justice) for Eva Smith. Gerald, while he truly regrets his part in her death, is still hard-headed enough to find out if an Eva Smith actually committed suicide when the Inspector’s authenticity is doubted. Only Sheila and Eric take on the full impact of the Inspector’s words. They feel responsibility for what happened to Eva Smith and accept that a change in society is needed. Priestley, therefore, suggests that any hope for future justice can only be with the young.
Sample Level 8 / 9
Question: How does Priestley present Mrs Birling’s response to the Inspector’s visit?
Write about: What Mrs Birling says and does in the play how Priestley presents Mrs Birling’s response to the Inspector’s visit.
Sybil Birling’s aloof and contemptuous nature springs from feelings of social superiority and her character (along with her husband’s) is central to an understanding of the play. They symbolise everything that Priestley believes is wrong with the Edwardian ruling class: their individualism, their lack of responsibility to the community and their callousness.
Having been off stage since the celebratory dinner, Mrs Birling is unaware of the dramatic events that have taken place between Sheila and Gerald in the Inspector’s presence. In Act Two she bustles in ‘briskly and self-confidently, quite out of key’ with what has happened. Priestley’s stage directions sum up her complete failure to sense the mood. Sheila’s attempts to prevent her mother ‘building a wall’ against the Inspector – a metaphor for resistance – are met with bewilderment and annoyance. Inspector Goole’s plain speaking is met with an accusation of impertinence.
Sybil Birling is ignorant of how others, less fortunate, struggle, at a time when there was no welfare state. Her myopic view of the world prevents her from grasping that Eva Smith, whose suicide is the focus of the Inspector’s call, visited The Brumley Women’s Charity Organization in desperation. The pregnant young woman’s offence was to call herself ‘Mrs Birling’, another apparent impertinence and an irony lost on Sybil. She is unaware that her son Eric was the father of Eva’s unborn child. For Sybil, Eva Smith is one of the undeserving poor, so she cruelly uses her influence to refuse charity. Not only that, she takes the opportunity to tell the Inspector in no uncertain terms that the father should be held ‘entirely responsible’ and ‘dealt with very severely’. Another irony.
At the heart of Sybil Birling’s character and the reason why the Inspector is so unwelcome is her acute sense of propriety, respectability and status. Maintaining her family’s social standing without regard to the needs of the wider society is where she feels her duty lies. She is quite unable to understand Sheila’s attitude as her daughter tries to face the crux of the Inspector’s (and Priestley’s) rhetorical message; that social justice is crucial to society and that without it there will be ‘fire and blood and anguish’. For Sybil Birling anything troubling or unsavoury must be kept hidden. Much of her dialogue is peppered with warnings: ‘Careful what you say, dear!’ ‘Sheila!’ ‘Arthur!’ ‘Eric!’ The frequency of exclamation marks in her speech reveals anxiety as well as disapproval. Any whiff of scandal alerts her to danger, so she resists the Inspector’s interrogation until it is impossible to do so.
There are two occasions in the play where her chilly exterior crumples. The first is the climax of Act Two. We witness her ‘frightened glance’, as she realises that Eric is the father of the unborn child, leaving us to speculate on what scenes will follow in Act Three. The second occasion is when Eric, ‘nearly at breaking point’, damns her for killing ‘her own grandchild’.
The audience is gripped as Sybil pleads that she didn’t understand that it was his child, and we see how this lack of understanding is part of her relationship with Eric. He accuses her of never having ‘tried’ to understand him. We do not know how she reacts to this. She says no more, and only speaks a few pages later to declare her shame at his behaviour. Is this an indication of her heartlessness or her inability to recognise her part in his unhappy life and alcoholism? Certainly, her recovery is remarkable once she thinks the Inspector is a hoax. All the previous revelations have been shuffled away in order to ‘behave sensibly’. For Sybil Birling the Inspector’s visit brings no epiphany, and we can only assume that she remains unchanged by all that has happened. Or does she? The Inspector, whether a man of insight or a mysterious prophet, warns her that she will ‘spend the rest of [her] life regretting’ what she did.