there are probably 30 quotations that you could easily use about the inspector but we're only going to focus on 10 of them and I'm going to show you how to get a Grade 9 just using these the most important by far is the longer quotation he gives us when he leaves the play so this long quotation begins with the millions of John Smiths and Eva Smiths that is important because it signals to the audience that Eva represents the working classes represents the population who are being exploited by the upper classes and the business classes like the burlings and Croft so there's the political message that he leaves the play with next he uses biblical and Christian imagery so he says we are all of one body now that that's what Jesus was talking about in The Last Supper when he told his disciples that he was going to be betrayed and that he was going to die and he asked them to take the bread as his body because we're all of one body in the eyes of God why does Priestly use this Christian imagery well most of his audience at least 80 percent of it would have been practicing Christians so if Priestly can marry their Christianity to their sense of moral purpose which of course he can he can then say that's exactly the same as socialism so if you're a Christian the logic goes you have to be a socialist his message continues we are responsible for each other that again is the Socialist message and it contradicts what Burlington said at the beginning of the play that a man just has to look after his family and himself now what many students don't realize is that this is an anti-war play remember this is being published in 1945 when the country has just lived through its second world war so why is Priestly so obsessed with war because he's linking wall to capitalism now Priestly sets this before the first world war because he wants to explore why a second world war happened it's because of the political classes who were willing to sacrifice their own children and so this is the warning that the expector leaves and I tell you that the time will soon come that if men will not learn that lesson they will be taught it in Fire and Blood and anguish and obviously Fire and Blood is a direct reference to the suffering in war that happens obviously not just in 1914 but also in 1939 to 1945 the second world war effectively what Priestly is arguing is that if the country were socialists if the government were socialist there is no way that they would take the country to war because they wouldn't see human life as Expendable as some kind of balance sheet of profit and loss whereas an interesting explanation for Eric not being able to change the future is yes he might well have learned the inspectors lesson but very likely he would have died in the first world war as a massive generation of young men did so that is your mega quotation that obviously gets you grade nine straight away there's loads of interpretations in there and you'll be able to use it not just on the inspector but any essay that comes up coming in next is the violence of Eva's death which the inspector wants to portray in a gruesome way in order to shock the burlings but in particular to shock Sheila remember Sheila takes on his lessons most she becomes his proxy she's the one he has most influence over and he begins that with this violent imagery he says of Eva burnt her insides out of course she was in great Agony so a horrible picture deliberately designed to manipulate Sheila's emotions but to the audience it also tells us what a terrible crime the burlings and Gerald must have committed in order for Sheila to decide on this method of suicide it suggests that the horror and pain she puts herself through now is equivalent in her own mind to the horror and pain of the exploitation she's received the hands of the berlings and Gerald our next quotation is after all it is better to ask for the Earth than to take it and it suggests that this capitalist Society represented by Berlin and Gerald is rapacious it's so hungry that it will consume the whole earth something that for us is easy to understand we've seen what happens when we use up the Earth's resources when we've got climate change but you know go back to 1945 and this is quite a revolutionary idea that the Earth is being stripped bare of all its goodness if you like by this rapacious ever hungry class of people who will even sacrifice their own children to war in order to get money Gerald tries to defend himself by saying that we are responsible citizens and not criminals the inspector replies sometimes there isn't as much difference as you think well clearly this is accusing all the ruling classes of being criminal the play is going to go on to prove that in not just a literal sense but a moral sense in the literal sense we're going to find out that Eric is a thief he's actually stolen at least 50 pounds from his father's business in the moral sense they are also corrupt a Burling sacked either obviously he didn't have a reason to do that because she was a good worker when Eva got the job at millwards Sheila got her sacked simply because she was jealous then Gerald exploited her installing her as he puts it as his mistress in his friend's flat and as soon as the friend returns from Canada he boots her out with hardly anyone money to live on in fact it's been much cheaper for him to have her in the flat than to actually go and look for prostitutes to have sex with when he wanted instead he gets this wonderful person who he decides is fresh and pretty and young and not like those doe-eyed women that he despises in the palace bar so he gets from his perspective an excellent Financial deal and that is all the Eva or Daisy Renton is to him a financial deal that is what the inspector means by criminal and then of course we have Eric who has forced himself on Eva Eva certainly wasn't a willing sexual partner not only has he got her pregnant and bought her money but it isn't enough money we know that because she ends up going to Mrs burling's charity and that leads us to think that perhaps Eric took this 50 pounds but did not give it all to Eva Smith because 50 pounds is more than a Year's wages she was receiving when she had a job at the berlings factory and they've only been together for just a few months so there's no way she could have spent that 50 pounds and then the next criminal in this sense is of course Mrs Burling who had it in her power to give charity to Eva which would have saved her life and the life of her baby but she refused because she simply didn't believe Eva's Story the next quotation places the play in a feminist context so Priestly deliberately chooses a female victim either to represent the working classes he also deliberately chooses Sheila Mrs Burling to be significant players in mistreating Eva because he's exploring the role of women before they had the vote in 1912 of course women had no political power they couldn't vote they couldn't change the political future of the country but in the audience watching this play in 1945 there is a large number of women perhaps even in the majority because obviously the men are still at War therefore with a predominantly female audience preach these messages listen women of England you can change the future because you now have a vote you now have been working for five or six years you've had a taste of what equality is like and therefore you can change what happens to women like you Eva is therefore a representation of what women like you used to be but you English women of the audience can change that future forever and perhaps that's why he calls it either ever ever see what I did there obviously you're also going to Chuck in the symbolism of Eva being similar to Eve the original woman so the quotation for this is that we should put ourselves in the place of these young women counting their pennies in their back rooms he emphasizes the words pennies because it shows how little they were paid he emphasizes counting to show that they would desperate for it to have enough just to survive and he wants to suggest that it isn't enough and either story dramatizes that doesn't it she ends up having to turn to the prostitution because there is no other way for her to earn an income and that obviously contributes significantly to her decision to end her life rather than carry on living not just in this physical hardship but this moral hardship of having to earn her living in a way that she cannot morally accept the next quotation links back to the idea of the inspector's brutality he has to be really brutal and blunt in order to cut through their class Prejudice so when both Sheila and Mr Burling want to atone for what they've done they want to put things right he says but you can't it's too late she's dead three really short impactful sentence that act like drum beats you can't it's too late she said to emphasize to hammer home in his point now we come to the supernatural element of the inspector so right at the beginning of the play we have Burling talking about how every man has to look after himself and his family and at that very moment when Burling is saying we do not have a social responsibility we only have to care for ourselves and our immediate family that is what summons the inspector's presence he is coming to correct that view not just to investigate the death of Eva two are linked he's suggesting that that view of just looking after yourself is what leads to the exploitation of people like Eva and what will lead to their deaths or their misery in life so how do we find out this because of Sheila and she says is that when the inspector came in just after father said that she realizes that he is Supernatural she realizes that he's been summoned by burling's words and therefore she realizes that he is a supernatural presence who has arrived to teach them a lesson this is straight out of Charles Dickens Playbook it's the plot of A Christmas Carol three ghosts four if you count Jacob Marley who teach Scrooge how to become a better man not just any better man how to stop being a rapacious capitalist businessman see the parallels and care for everybody else in society another parallel and that is a hundred percent deliberate a hundred percent of his audience would have read A Christmas Carol now what the inspector wants is for the burlings to accept blame and so he says before he departs who is to blame them you're not even sorry now who is to blame this links back to the Christian message of the play so if we go back to the Garden of Eden not going to retell you the whole story but God gives his instructions to Adam and Eve not to eat on these two trees one of which is the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he doesn't actually remove that tree from the Garden of Eden because it is a test the whole Christian message is it's not enough to be good you have to choose good in the face of something evil that seems better and that's the final choice that the inspector is leaving the berlings and Gerald it's obviously much easier to go on living an irresponsible life with huge wealth and so the inspector deliberately leaves them with that choice that's why Priestly removes him from the play and of course just like Adam and Eve they fail the test now the whole point of being a Christian is to return back to that original state of innocence and so the political message is vote socialists and you will return back to that state of Innocence which then will admit you into heaven not only will you be helping the millions of John Smiths and the millions of Eva Smiths and everyone else in the country but you will be saving your own soul that is the subtext the underlying message for his Christian audience just before he goes he delivers a warning but each of you helped to kill her remember remember remember I've used an ellipsis to take out the words in between but three times he says remember now one way of interpreting that is that he wants to deliver the powerful message another way of interpreting that is that he instinctively knows they will not remember and therefore act on what they have learned they are going to choose to forget that lesson now that is going to be super important at the end because it ends just before the first World War they haven't learned the lesson there's a first world war that's equivalent to the first death of Eva Smith however there is a second world war and this is why he's writing the play because society and the capitalists in it still did not learn that lesson that's why we had the second world war according to Priestly so what he's suggesting here is that Eric and Sheila look like they have learned the inspector's lesson but for some reason that has not translated into avoiding the second world war well there are two main reasons why this could have happened number one the patriarchy so poor old Sheila can learn the lesson but she has no power in this Society she can't even vote and therefore she does not have a say that's going to change the political future when Berlin hands on his business who is he going to hand it on to not Sheila is going to hand it on to Eric if Eric survives and that is reason number two this whole younger generation of men who might have grown up to improve Society didn't because they were killed in the first World War and that meant people like Burling and Gerald who didn't fight in the war were still left to carry on their political and social views and have a much greater influence because the younger generation weren't coming through insufficient numbers there is of course the third possibility Eric does survive but actually all his conscience in this play is produced because he's drunk he's squiffy at the end so he's squiffy at the beginning and he keeps drinking he's getting drunker and drunker and drunker we see that in the violence that He suggests to his mother Mrs Burling at one stage Sheila even tries to intervene so we know that he's actually really drunk when he's taking on the responsibility of guilt when he sobers up not just physically the next day but metaphorically he'll probably still side with his father and Gerald of course you don't have to interpret it that way you can say well no we think that Eric has learned the inspector's lesson he will change but he never assumes this position of authority and by he Eric is also symbolic of that whole younger generation and therefore they just carry on with their parents wishes even if they don't share their views the inspector's other warning is about Eva now she'll make you pay a heavier price still this is obviously a reference to the two World Wars again it marks it out as an anti-war play but it also marks it out as a feminist play so in death Eva assumes a feminine power this is much like the suffragettes so you've got this famous case of one of them throwing herself under one of the horses at the Derby deliberately committing suicide in a really public arena in order to draw society's attention to the lack of power of women well of course the first world war promoted that why because millions of women suddenly had jobs for the first time and with jobs they had an income with an income they got independence with Independence they got all time and a degree of power and they wanted to maintain that astonishingly after the first World War the government said oh you know all these jobs that have gone to women get rid of them the men are coming back the end of the second world war Society was different and that is why Priestly is directing the play at women they're going to keep their jobs they're not going to be ordered by government to sacrifice them and give them up now obviously the job market might still be sexist and employers might still favor men but the other part of that sexism was that they could keep the women and pay them less and be in good capitalists what do you think they did oh well we find that women can do jobs just as well as men but we can pay them less I know what I'll do I'll exploit this fact and make more profit so obviously the Socialist message here is two-edged women not only do you need to keep your jobs but you need to vote for a fairer Society that's a socialist society according to Priestly and that's why this warning of she Eva coming back to haunt the burlings is that they will gradually lose out because Society will become more equal and more socialists and the catalysts will make less profit and we look around and that's exactly what's happened all these Mega rich people they're all women now aren't they Elona Musk so these 10 quotations or ramp you up to these grade nine interpretations of the play it's going to be super easy to condense all of that for your revision into top grades make notes from what you've just heard put the notes aside go and write an essay and see if you've remembered them if you just watched the video you better just be watching it the night before the exam because otherwise you'll forget it otherwise make notes apply them in an essay you'll remember everything let's face it only about 100 people watching this is going to do that and then they're going to get top grades now if you would like to know how to get top grades from one video instead of buying my awesome guide this is the video to watch next