Mr Birling quotes
“For lower costs and higher prices”
“Unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable”
“Like bees in a hive”
“A man has to mind his own business and look after himself”
“I can’t accept any responsibility”
“This unpleasant business”
“I’ve got to cover this up as soon as I can”
Mrs Birling quotes
“Girls of that class”
“Useful work in helping deserving cases”
“You have no power to make me change my mind”
“A girl of that sort would never refuse any money”
“But I think she only had herself to blame”
Gerald Croft quotes
“She was young and pretty and warm hearted- and intensely grateful”
“I don’t come into this suicide business”
“After all, we’re respectable citizens, not criminals”
“Everything’s alright now, Sheila”
“I’m rather more-upset- by this business than I probably appear to be”
Sheila Birling quotes
“Oh I wish you hadn’t told me”
“But these girls aren’t cheap labour-they’re people”
“Hysterical”
“You mustn’t try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl”
“You were the wonderful Fairy Prince”
“No, he’s giving us the rope- so that we’ll hang ourselves”
“I rather respect you more than I ever have before”
“You and I aren’t the same people who sat down to dinner here”
Eric Birling quotes
“Not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive”
“It isn’t if you can’t go and work somewhere else”
“You’re not the kind of father a chap could go to when he’s in trouble”
“Why shouldn’t they try for higher wages? We try for the highest prices”
“I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty”
“You don’t understand anything. You never did. You never even tried”
“I hate these fat old tarts around town- the ones I see some of your respectable friends with”
Inspector quotes
“He creates at once an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness”
“It’s better to ask for the earth than to take it”
“[dryly] I don’t play golf”
“And you think young women ought to be protected against unpleasant and disturbing things?”
“We’ll have to share our guilt”
“Your daughter isn’t living on the moon. She’s here in Brumley too”
“Public men, Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges”
“As if she was an animal, a thing, not a person”
“You made her pay a heavy price for that. And now she’ll make you pay a heavier price still”
“There are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us”
“They will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish”
Quotes for Capitalism
“For lower costs and higher prices”
“A man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own-“
“But I think she only had herself to blame”
What are the 7 deadly sins and why are the Birlings used to represent them
Gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride
Further divine interpretations of the play- Eva is a biblical allusion to ‘Eve’, who was manipulated by the Devil, presented as the Birlings and the upper class as a whole who use their privileges and abuse their power to exploit the lower classes
How is the emphasised and emotive language of the Inspector effective
It contrasts the vague euphemistic tones of the Birlings and challenges their evasive attitudes, forcing them to take accountability for their behaviour
The Inspector demonstrates a classless perspective and indifference towards status by dismissing the shield the Birlings use to protect themselves, exposing their societal pretensions
How is Eva’s symbolic and unseen presence effective in the play
Her identity is used as a construct and a metaphor to spread a universal statement of society’s failures as a whole, embodying the suffering and oppression faced by the working class
