Theme Of Morality In An Inspector Calls

In melodrama the weak and the innocent often fall prey to the evil villain, who is rich and powerful. Birling is a caricature of the grasping capitalist. Eva Smith is a caricature of the poor, downtrodden victim who retains her dignity and nobility of spirit. She is too good to be true .Mr and Mrs Birling remain the archetypical villains to the end because they fail to learn the moral lesson of the play.

"We don't live alone. We are all members of one body. We are responsible for each other."

“An Inspector Calls” is a morality play by the socialist playwright J. B. Priestley written in 1945 but set in 1912. The play is based on the wealthy Birling family, who is questioned by a police inspector regarding a young woman’s death. Using characters of different ages to represent the contrast of political stances and attitudes, Priestley attempts to educate the audience. He believed that Capitalism was the sole reason for the start of world war one and therefor also the cause of the great economic depression and the second world war. Priestley uses the age in the play, to tell the audience that capitalists don’t have any social responsibility, as they do not accept any responsibility for Eva Smith’s death. The behavioural contrast between the Birling parents and their children demonstrate that if you are capitalist, you can still alter your beliefs and become socialist.

There are a number of suspects which in an inspector calls is the entire family on set. There are also red herrings and anticipations. The red herrings are created by the way the inspector conducts his interview. The inspector only focuses on one character at a time, starting with Mr. Birling. It appears early in the play that Mr. Birling is a major contributor to Eva smiths death, but then the inspector turns onto the next character Sheila. The interrogation of Sheila leads us to think that Sheila is now a major contributor towards the death of Eva Smith. Sheila's character turns out to be very different to that of her father who is very defensive and more worried about the bad reputation that this could cause the family, where as Sheila throughout the play starts to discover a moral and ethical side of herself. An example of this is in act two where Sheila says "It means that we've no excuse now for putting on airs and that if we've any sense we wont try. Father threw this girl out because she asked for decent wages. I went and pushed her further out, right into the street, just because I was angry and she was pretty. Gerald set her up as his mistress and then dropped her when it suited him. And now you're pretending you don’t recognize her from that photograph I admit I don’t know why you should, but I know jolly well you did in fact recognize her from the way you

Throughout Priestley’s play, ‘An inspector calls’, a main theme runs about responsibility and differentiation between classes. Each character is accountable of doing something that brought about the death of Eva smith. All the characters contribute to her death in one way or the other, and all of them are at fault for the death of

In An Inspector Calls, one of the main themes is responsibility. Priestley is interested in our personal responsibility for our own actions and our collective responsibility to society. The play explores the effect of class, age and sex on people's attitudes to responsibility, and shows how prejudice can prevent people from acting responsibly. In this essay I am going to explain how Priestley presents the theme of responsibility and how he uses structural and language devices to do so.

command at the end of Act I and the start of Act 2, and the end of Act

Morality in its basic definition, is the knowledge between what is right and what is wrong. In Joan Didion’s essay, “On Morality,” she uses examples to show how morality is used to justify actions and decisions by people. She explains that morality can have a profound effect on the decisions that people chose to make. I think that morality is an idea that is different for every individual based on morals and background.

Moral is a principle of right and wrong, and a standard to define a person’s behavior. People have different moral standards, it is moulded through nurturing and is changed as one gains more life experiences. Moral ethics also varies in different countries of different culture and religious beliefs. There are some common principles that people use in everyday life, for instance the Golden Rule (Versions of the Golden Rule in 21 World Religions) (you should treat others the way you want to be treated) and the Hippocratic Oath (Greek Medicine) (Primum non nocere/ First do no harm), which is widely used in medical ethics. (Bioethics) We would discuss more deeply on the moral standards and obstacles we face daily in the following.

Morality is a particular system of values and principles of conduct. My interpretation of this is the distinction of right and wrong. Everyone has a personal morals, whether it’s through a group, organization, or just the way their parents brought them up. Morals help create an organized society, they are like unwritten laws. There are so many morals out there the government could not make them all laws, so although morals help govern the world they are not actual laws. Without morals the world would be nothing but chaos. Being honest, fair and just, making the world a better place, respecting others, and being open minded are just a few examples.

In this essay, I am going to discuss how the character Eva Smith in the play An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley is treated in the play and the relation of this to the socialist views of the playwright. I will look at the historical context of when the play was written and when it was set, describe what happens to Eva Smith throughout the play and then link this to a socialist viewpoint.

A number of other issues that were around at the time the play was set

An Inspector Calls is set in 1912 before World War One. The play is centred around, a wealthy family called the Birlings. The visit from the Inspector reveals that all the characters had played a part in the suicide of a girl called Eva Smith. In some ways, all the characters are responsible for the death of Eva Smith, each one of them did something that affected her in some way or another. Overall I feel that some characters were more responsible than others for many different reasons. In the book we see several different reactions from the characters when they find out that they are caught up in the suicide, some were upset and distressed and others just tried to pass the blame to others and tried to excuse what they had done. The characters selfishness was a huge contributions to Eva Smiths suicide.

characters in the play, he is trying to use her as a way of making

this is his role in the events of the play. This, and the fact that