AO3 integration: Inspector Calls

Explain how knowledge of Priestley's 1945 context improves understanding of An Inspector Calls. Give TWO specific examples. [6 marks]

Mark scheme (3 marks per example: context point + language link + effect):

Example 1:

• 1945 context: the play was written just after WWII; the Labour Party was about to win the 1945 election and create the Welfare State — the collective responsibility Priestley had advocated in his wartime broadcasts was becoming political reality (B1).
• Language link: Inspector's speech "We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other" (B1).
• Effect: for a 1945 audience, this was not utopian idealism but imminent policy — the Inspector voices a social programme that the audience was about to enact. The play is a political argument as much as a drama (E1).

Example 2:

• Dramatic irony: Birling's 1912 speeches ("Titanic — unsinkable"; "no war coming") (B1).
• 1945 context: the 1945 audience knows the Titanic sank and two world wars followed (B1).
• Effect: Birling's authority is undermined from his first speech; Priestley positions the audience to see that his values (individualism, capitalism) are catastrophically wrong — and the disasters that followed them in history are the proof (E1).