calling Year 11 English Lit: An Inspector Calls: I think the Inspector Did It

[Waterparc]

please help. DS1 has to study An Inspector Calls. He was doing a question on the ending and we have just realised that Eva was killed by the Inspector who then prepped the other characters to confess in order to have the perfect defence.

is there a better explanation?

@ThunderInMyHeart I’m glad I’m not alone in my hatred of Beloved. I couldn’t read it at all for A level, and I’ve read some utter shite in my life. I told my tutor I was prepared to fail as it was just impossible. Luckily the exam asked a vague themes type question and I managed to construct a plausible essay from what I remembered of class conversations.

theduchessstill

Just coming on the thread to applaud your efforts to choose books to study which have females in them. Keep it up.

We can all live without Lord of the Flies anyway (which would have been a very different piece of work had Golding’s editors not sliced up and filleted his original offering).

A Christmas Carol has a happy ending at least!
I did Latin GCSE and A level, and then a Classics degree, and it’s all people murdering their mothers and baking children in pies and blinding themselves and having sex disguised as animals. That’s what makes it so interesting.
We did a selection of Latin poems on the theme of death for GCSE, and there was a particularly choice one about an icicle falling off a roof and stabbing a boy in the jugular. The ice melted in his warm blood as he bled to death, if I recall rightly.

I did The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter for GCSE English Lit, btw.

Mr Birling in Cabin Pressure is indeed named from AIC, because in an earlier draft of the first Birling Day episode there was also an Inspector Goole on board.
johnfinnemore.blogspot.com/2014/12/farewell-bear-facts-edinburgh.html?m=1

Well, from marking Lit, the depth and sophistication of responses to LotF is unparalleled in any of the other Literature texts. I think it’s better to tackle the issue of poor representation with the class whilst reading these texts rather than to screen them out entirely. I think girls in the class are more likely to find that deconstruction of female representation in lessons, putting it under the spotlight and pinpointing why it happened to be more empowering than to ignore the fact that women in literature have been so badly portrayed for so long. It isn’t just about an ‘interesting discussion’, it changes students’ world views. They can’t have that realisation, that light bulb moment about patriarchy if we pretend those texts don’t exist. Fine if you don’t want to teach it, but to say you’ll never have it taught in your dept does everyone a disservice.

if they balanced it out by having more female-written poetry to study, that would help.

Why can't they do something like Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or I capture the Castle? both of which have a lot ofjoy in them.

AQA’s C20th female offerings are A Taste Of Honey (excellent for representation but not exactly chirpy), and Anita and Me, along with 10 pieces by men: some world class like Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, some not really. The 19th century choices do much better by women, with Jane Eyre, P&P and Frankenstein against four by men, including two Dickens.

by the way, why does Mrs Birling say "Arthur you're not supposed to say such things" when Birling says the dinner is nice.

IrmaFayLear I'd ditch The History Boys based on the fact that it seems to be based on the premise that paedophiles are okay as long as they're lovely eccentric academics

I love AIC, and what I find most interesting is the fact that in all likelihood only Sheila has a future. Gerald and Eric will die in the Great War, and the Birlings are a couple of dinosaurs who'll probably never recover from their shame.

I love it when Sheila is mentally torturing Gerald over Daisy Renton.

Water Mrs Birling is of a higher class than Mr Birling and it's terribly middle class to comment on the food - she feels the difference in their social status despite his money. Hence him being so fixated on becoming a Lord
Mawkish I agree we do a whole lesson on their futures - class always decide Gerald will survive as he is titled whereas Eric will die. Sheila will go an be a nurse much to the annoyance of her parents!

The sons of aristocratic families died at a higher rate than ordinary soldiers, probably because they were the officers who led the charges.

Key words in my post are "class always decide"

That's how they see it will happen.

@TheSageofOnions and with a bottle of Talisker to boot!

Frankenstein was written by a woman, but the female characters are vapid and one-dimensional, existing only to serve as poignant sacrifices to male rage and narcissism. So it doesn’t strike a rousing chord for feminism in itself - still brilliant to study and helpful to explore exactly that aspect of it with students.

But that's the point with 'Frankenstein'! Her mother was Wollstonecraft; her father Godwin! It's not like Shelley missed the memo!

It’s my grandsons set piece too

It's not a whodunnit ffs but a reminder that there are any number of people out there whose lives have been negatively, devastatingly impacted by the family who are themselves ciphers of inequality. Because inequality will be perpetuated endlessly through the class system.

Their mistake before the final reveal is in thinking that they've been taught the lesson about one person. As we can see it isn't a very lasting lesson because as soon as they find out she hasn't killed herself they revert to type, albeit nervously. What the ending of the play does is say: but there's another. And where there's another, there's another further and so on.

This fits in nicely with their realisation that they could have each been shown a different photograph. Yes they could and that's significant but not in the way they think. They consider it significant because it lessens their responsibility for their position and how they use it. But actually the significance is the sheer number of people who are adversely affected by these things. The woman is Everywoman.

I swear my son did these, Steinbeck and Priestley, and he's 42 for crying out loud. Do they never alter the curriculum? Do they know Queen Victoria is no longer with us?

Is the class system also no longer with us?

I mean, you know, you would only have to change things very slightly to have the same story now: the husband owns uber, the wife is a government welfare advisor, the son's on Made in Chelsea etc.

Yes. I've got it thanks.

I absolutely love AIC and have read a couple of other Priestly plays off the back of it.

I don’t think it was a comment on all rich people being awful any more than all poor people being innocent. Rather it was a commentary on the social issues of the time and how each family member had contributed to Eva’s death,

Nor do I think Eva specifically laughed at Sheila but was laughing about something and Sheila interpreted it as about her.
My son in Y11 has just finished reading Of Mice and Men which he found interesting,

I also read A Town Like Alice and Cider With Rosie at school back in the early 1980s both of which I adored and read more by both authors. A few months ago I went to lay some flowers on Laurie Lee’s grave in Slad and also for his mother who is buried in the same churchyard.

Amazing to see other names he mentioned in the book ...children then who have grown old and died in the village and also buried there.

Also @Waterparc about the food... he pays the cook's wages so it's almost like he's complimenting himself as he selected her. As Gerald is the guest it would be Gerald who should offer compliments to the chef (and the household).

waterparc if the inspector had murdered Eva just to prove to the Birlings who badly they had behaved and ho wthey failed in a duty of compassion towards her, that would make him a sociopath, and therefore lacking in any moral compass or compassion.
Doesn't add up.