How Priestley presents Mr Birling, and how the character develops across the text: a self-satisfied capitalist who refuses to accept responsibility, and his dramatic irony.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'heavy-looking, rather portentous man', 'rather provincial in his speech', 'a hard-headed, practical man of business', 'unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable', 'lower costs and higher prices', 'like bees in a hive', 'Just let me finish, Eric. You've a lot to learn yet.', 'I can't accept any responsibility', 'asking for the earth', 'I'd give thousands', 'Probably a Socialist or some sort of crank', 'the famous younger generation who know it all'.
Context: the 1945 audience and that year's Labour victory, set against Birling's 1912 certainties; Birling as a caricature of a capitalist.
Eduqas's essay on this text marks your response and your analysis of language, form and structure, not context: use context only where it helps an interpretation, and treat the printed extract as a starting point for an essay on the whole play.
