In Act One Of ‘A Inspector Calls’ How Does J.B. Priestley Use Dramatic Devices To Convey His Concerns And Ideas To Members Of The Audience, As Well As Interest Them And Involve Them In The Play?
J.B. Priestley wrote ‘An Inspector calls’ at the height of his powers as a playwright. The plays purpose it to deliver a pro-socialist message to the audience. The writer does this by using dramatic devices to convey his concerns and ideas to members of the audience. It is a political drama, aimed at the upper and middle classes, since they were the most likely to see the play.
The message from the playwright is that the individual and the community all have varying responsibilities within society; that we can all pursue our own self-interests but we have to think about others as well as ourselves. At the time the play was written, the upper classes had a clear stranglehold over the lower classes, and showed little repentance for the misfortune of those who had neither wealth nor power. The play although written in 1945, after the end of the Second World War, was set on a spring evening in 1912, two years before World War One. Priestley set the play 35 years in the past to give members of the audience the benefit of hindsight, and also enabling him to use several of Birling’s speeches at the beginning to establish him as a pompous and arrogant character. Dramatic irony is used by Priestley from the start of Act One. At the start of the play, we are introduced to Arthur Birling as a "heavy-looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties but rather provincial in his speech." He is proud of his achievements, and misses no opportunity to remind others of his exploits, such as the chance of being knighted. Arthur’s family and Gerald respect him and his views. They listen intently as he tells them that the Titanic is unsinkable. The solid house, the cigars, the decanter of port and the champagne glasses, represent a comfortable, secure and pleasant lifestyle for the Birlings.
Arthur Birling shows his sheer pomposity at the start of the play, with several speeches he delivers, in which he claims that the “Great War” will never happen and the Titanic is...
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