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How Does Priestley Present Eva Smith In An Inspector Calls

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How does Priestley’s presentation of Eva Smith convey his key message? By presenting Eva Smith as an undeserving victim of capitalism, Priestley successfully promotes socialist values - the need for social responsibility and equality - whilst criticising the selfish nature of capitalism. Furthermore, by making Eva Smith’s identity questionable, Priestley conveys his message that actions should be carefully considered, regardless of consequences. Priestley makes it blatantly clear that Eva Smith is a clear victim of capitalists’ disregard for social equality in order to sway his audience into supporting socialism. Eva is essentially killed by capitalism as the struggles she experienced were due to their selfishness. When Sheila admits to her …show more content…

Towards the end of the play, the Birlings and Gerald start speculating about Eva and after a long and meaningful dramatic pause, Mr Birling turns to the group and says “No girl has died in there today.” The matter of fact sense created around the sentence through its brevity, immediately causes the audience to question everything and pay heavy attention to the following scene. In response to discovering no Eva Smith has died, Mr Birling says ‘(jovially) But the whole thing’s different now’; the stage direction ‘jovially’ exemplifies the happiness Mr Birling feels from acquiring the knowledge he is not going to pay for his actions and Mrs Birling matches his reaction showing the older generation’s inability to accept their wrong doings unless there are consequences. However, as the audience have come to despise the elder Birlings and prefer Sheila, they are inclined to agree with her opinion on the situation. The young girl disagrees with her parents and fights back with ‘So nothing really happened. So there's nothing to be sorry for, nothing to learn. We can all go on behaving just as we did.’ This makes the audience accept that actions should be thoroughly thought through before being committed; consequences are not the correct way to judge morality. Additionally, Sheila’s repetition of the word ‘nothing’ heightens her emotions to a state of desperation, further persuading the audience into thinking more before

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