THE ROLE OF THE INSPECTOR

ESSAY PARAGRAPHS

Paragraph checklist

Introduction

write this when you have decided on your topic sentences (ie what your paragraph is about)

Social and historical context

Dramatic Structure (Two Paragraphs)

If you think about the play as a whole, the inspector is central to the structure and narrative of the play.

• Unities of time (see notes)

• ‘Whodunnit’ (see notes)

DRAMATIC TENSION A good idea to say how the inspector effects the audience both during and after the play.

Could split this into 2 paragraphs

• See tension graph• Page 28 – ‘He’s pretty good at exits too)

Themes

What the inspector represents in terms of the themes in the play.

At least two paragraphs worth here

Who is he and where has he come from – creates intrigue and a sense of mystery so as well as guessing ‘whodunnit’ or who is the most responsible, we are constantly asking ourselves who is this mysterious figure.

JUDGEMENT

This is where you include the words moral and philosophical-see booklet as well as page 28 (bootom of) and 29 CGP

RESPONSIBILTY

Most important concern of the play. Again try to include ‘philosophy’ – eg It is quite clear that through the inspector Priestly promotes his socialist philosophy.

LANGUAGE How the inspector uses emotive language – Inspector speaks ‘carefully, weightily’ (Act 1, Page 10) and constantly uses questions and instructions in a commanding and sometimes menacing way. This helps him to control, direct and develop the plot. His language also gives him authority.

His final speech uses quite a different sort of language: it is the language of a prophet and sounds more like a sermon than the carefully weighted words of a policeman.

Times when he produces dramatic results by the use of short sentences or even a single word ( give an example). Other times when he speaks in long sentences which have an emphatic rhythm. (eg ‘Because what happened to her then may have determined what happened to her afterwards, and what happened to her afterwards may have driven her to suicide’ (Act 1, Page 14) (FIND YOUR OWN EXAMPLE!)

A VEHICLE FOR PRIESTLY’s DRAMATIC IRONY

Much of the play’s success depends upon the D.I. which Priestly creates. The inspector is heavily ironic in an early exchange with A.B. who that it would be ‘very awkward’ if we had to be ‘responsible for everything that happened to everybody we’d had anything to do with’ (Act 1 Pg 14. The inspector echoes Birling’s very words ‘very awkward’. It seems he is agreeing with Birling, but we soon come to realise that he is hinting that what will follow will indeed be very awkward for the Birling family. They will look at responsibility in a very different way.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the inspector has been talking to us the audience as much as he has been talking to the characters on stage. Are we in a position to judge what has happened when we ourselves are as guilty of acting irresponsibly and unkindly as anyone on stage! This irony strengthens our feeling that Priestly’s type of socialism is not so much about politics but about caring and even, perhaps,about love.

INSPECTORS EFFECT ON CHARACTERS

Two para’s. One on younger generation and one on older.

REMEMBER TO QUOTE IN EVERY PARAGRAPH

REMEMBER TO QUOTE PROPERLY (see notes)

AN INSPECTOR CALLS

PARAGRAPH SUGGESTIONS

PRIESTLY FASCINATED BY THEORIES ABOUT THE NATURE OF TIME

most of see time as a straight line going from one point to another in continuous sequence

OUSPENSKY’S THEORY

• when we die we re-enter our life once more from the beginning – same house – same parents – continue to repeat events of our life as before.

• in order to stop this we to improve in some significant spiritual way – so that we can escape from the repetitions and mistakes into a new life.

Dunne’s Time Theory

• Laid out the idea that you could be given the gift of seeing forward in time as well as looking back.

• So not only would u be able to see what actions led to your present situation – you’d also see the consequences of your action. – Thus, if you so wished u could change those actions and so avoid the consequences.

‘I.C.’ contains some of these time elements

• Inspector arriving before suicide – offers each character a chance to see the consequences and therefore change their future. S + G seem prepared to face up to their past actions and improve themselves – the others don’t

How do you tie this into the essay

• something like:With regard to ‘Time’ Priestly uses the inspector to put forward his ideas about time

May want to link with the reason why Priestly set the play in 1912

Sets the play in 1912 but because he’s presenting the play to a later audience, Priestly has covered an era which includes both World Wars. The failure of the older characters to take on board the inspector’s ideas reflects the failure of generations to learn from the mistakes of the recent past

Through the inspector, Priestly is hoping that second time around the world will learn from past mistakes and we may see such hopes of ‘looking after one another’, if we the audience, can accept the challenge to be caring and socially aware.

WHO IS THE INSPECTOR?

The mystery of who the inspector is one the play never answers

One answer is that he is simply a dramatic device; without him there would be no play.

But given that the other characters are all believable and realistic, audiences want to know about the reality of the inspector.

Gerald discovers that the inspector is not who he says he is. He helps the unpick the inspector’s story of the girl. S + E hang on to the conviction that ‘it was anything but a joke’ while accepting that there may have been more than one girl and that no girl may have committed suicide.

• He’s Priestly• He’s God (in the sense that he’s telling

the Birlings to repent of their sins)• He’s the voice of our conscience• He’s the child Eva Smith was pregnant

with• He’s a ghost• He’s a time traveller• He’s a real police inspector

You will pick up marks for saying who you think the inspector is and why.

STRUCTURE – ‘Well-made play’This paragraph must include a quotation

J.B. follows the tradition of the three unities of the ‘well-made play’. The action is focused on one story-line, there is only one setting, and the time of the action on stage is identical to the real time that the action takes. Even if there is a break for a possible interval, the start of the next Act takes us to the same point in time at which we left the action. Notice how the inspector is integral to this. Give an example with quotation.

The Inspector’s questioning of each character in turn propels the play forward. Their exits and entrances are always plausible and always allow some new aspect of the plot to be introduced or something mentioned earlier to be developed. Eg Gerald’s walk – what does this allow for? The Inspector controls all of this. In particular, each new revelation, prompted by the Inspectors careful use of the photograph or information from the diary, adds to the overall picture of those two crucial years in the girl’s life.

Following on from Unities of time paragraph – Dramatic Tension Paragraph

Priestly uses the conventions of the well made play to build up the mystery and suspense. The first scene gently introduces the main characters, and from then on each entrance or exit highlights a dramatic moment.

REST OF PARAGRAPH – USE THE TENSION GRAPH

Make sure you focus on the Inspector’s entrance and you must mention the STAGE DIRECTIONS (esp. stage lighting – u need the book for this)

Dramatic Genre Paragraph – Essential for ‘A’ Grade

The play has elements of a “whodunnit” since the girl’s story is gradually revealed through the Inspector’s careful questioning of the suspects.

SEE NOTES Page 15 re GENRE – You must make these brief (there’s over a page of very small writing) Must say how ‘An Inspector Calls’ differs from a traditional ‘whodunnit’ If you are doing the role of the Inspector – make sure you tie the paragraph with the role.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE P.F.O.C.ENGLISH LIT. ‘OF MICE AND MEN’

ENGLISH LIT. POETRY

Unless you learn how to use quotations properly the marker will not be able to award you an ‘A’ Grade

HOW TO USE QUOTATIONS

• Put double inverted commas at the beginning and at the end of the quotation;

• Write the quotation exactly as it appears in the original. The only exception is if it is a long quotation then you can omit some of it using …

• DO NOT use a quotation that merely repeats what you have just written

• Try to use the quotation so that it fits into your sentence.

• Try to keep the quotation as short as possible

QUOTATIONS SHOULD BE USED TO DEVELOP THE LINE OF THOUGHT IN YOUR ESSAYS. YOUR COMMENT SHOULD NOT DUPLICATE WHAT IS IN YOUR QUOTATION

DO NOTGerald Croft tells the inspector that he first met Daisy Renton in the bar of the local theatre the previous spring, “I met her first, sometime in March last year, in the stalls at the Palace Bar.

DO

Gerald Croft says that he first met Daisy Renton “in the stalls bar at the Palace”.

Far better is to embed the quotation

• Gerald, seeing that Alderman Meggarty was “half-drunk and goggle-eyed” (Act II, Page 35), wanted to rescue Daisy Renton from him.