What is the significance of Mr Birling?
What is the significance of Mr Birling?
Birling represents capitalism, the political position that Priestly is most critical of as a socialist therefore he is the character that is made look the most foolish in the play. He is the one that seems to start off the chain of events. Birling ultimately is responsible.
Throughout the play we can clearly see that Mr Birling represents Capitalism. We see this straight away in the stage directions on the 1st page telling us that he is a “heavy looking man rather portentous man in his middle fifties with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in his speech” from this description we can tell that Mr birling is a fat man meaning greed leading to the purposes of what capitalism is like and how he has worked his way up and that he was not born into nobility. On page 6 when he is giving a speech of how things work around here to the ‘children’. ‘We employers’ and ‘our interests’ this represents capitalism firstly with the plural pronouns, which are inclusive of ‘we’ and ‘our’ because he is talking for everybody or a group as a whole. The ‘employers’ part shows that he is the boss referring back to how he is talking like a capitalist and referring back to how he is talking on behalf of other capitalists. Mr Birling also on page 6 goes on about how capitalism is ‘properly protected’, the verb ‘protected’ implies antagonism or a battle between different types of political parties it is also shows how he is social standing and how he is afraid to lose it almost showing the audience that he is a bit insecure about himself. The ‘Our interests’ is standing for the ‘interests of capital’ and the parallel phrasing of interests is directly telling the audience that his concerns are capitalist concerns not any others.
Priestly also uses dramatic irony to make Mr Birling look foolish in many parts of the play. This is also shown near the beginning of the book on page 6 where Mr Birling says confidently “Germans don’t want war.
Birling represents capitalism, the political position that Priestly is most critical of as a socialist therefore he is the character that is made look the most foolish in the play. He is the one that seems to start off the chain of events. Birling ultimately is responsible.
Throughout the play we can clearly see that Mr Birling represents Capitalism. We see this straight away in the stage directions on the 1st page telling us that he is a “heavy looking man rather portentous man in his middle fifties with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in his speech” from this description we can tell that Mr birling is a fat man meaning greed leading to the purposes of what capitalism is like and how he has worked his way up and that he was not born into nobility. On page 6 when he is giving a speech of how things work around here to the ‘children’. ‘We employers’ and ‘our interests’ this represents capitalism firstly with the plural pronouns, which are inclusive of ‘we’ and ‘our’ because he is talking for everybody or a group as a whole. The ‘employers’ part shows that he is the boss referring back to how he is talking like a capitalist and referring back to how he is talking on behalf of other capitalists. Mr Birling also on page 6 goes on about how capitalism is ‘properly protected’, the verb ‘protected’ implies antagonism or a battle between different types of political parties it is also shows how he is social standing and how he is afraid to lose it almost showing the audience that he is a bit insecure about himself. The ‘Our interests’ is standing for the ‘interests of capital’ and the parallel phrasing of interests is directly telling the audience that his concerns are capitalist concerns not any others.
Priestly also uses dramatic irony to make Mr Birling look foolish in many parts of the play. This is also shown near the beginning of the book on page 6 where Mr Birling says confidently “Germans don’t want war.