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Priestley's Main Aim in An Inspector Calls Essay

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Priestley's Main Aim in An Inspector Calls J.b. Prestly wrote 'An inspector calls' in 1943 on a play based in 1912. He was born in Bradford Yorkshire on 13th sept 1894 and died in 1984. He left school at sixteen because he wanted to write and takes a job with a firm of wool merchants. Priestley used his knowledge in working in the local wool to present Eva Smith and the working class people. His fathers friends were mainly socialist and he joined in with their political arguments. He used his socialist views in the play. He joined the army in 1914 and uses his knowledge he had in the war to portray the character of Mr Birling. …show more content…

This leads us to regard Mr Birling as an arrogant and shortsighted man If we contrast the character of Birling with that of the Inspector, we can see Priestly's aims showing. The Inspector is the opposite of Birling. Where Birling's predictions are wrong, the Inspector predicts that if people don't learn their responsibilities, they will be taught in 'fire and blood and anguish'. This prediction refers to World War I most obviously. The lessons of World War I weren't learnt so the same mistakes were made and another war started. Though Priestly was unaware of it when the play was written, sixty years on the same mistakes have caused war after war. Another contrast to Birling is that while Birling seemingly knows nothing of his family's affairs, Sheila says of the Inspector 'We hardly ever told him anything he didn't know'. At the end of Act Three, Birling seems not to have taken any of the lessons of the evening to heart. The demise of Eva Smith and the part each member of his family played in her death have not shaken his belief that 'a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own' and that there's every excuse for what he and Mrs Birling did. In fact, he is more concerned with his own reputation than with Eva. He

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