AIBU to hate An Inspector Calls?

[Evasmithsghost]

English teacher so have to teach this dirge every year.

I hate the superior, haughty, lecturing tone taken throughout.

Hate Gerald and the way he’s partially let off the hook.

Hate the way Mrs Birling is given such harsh treatment by the playwright when in fact she is quite right and Eva did lie.

Really can’t stand this play!

I haven't read it since school and can't actually remember any details. But, I do remember that I hated it.

I'm so sorry that you have to teach it every year. I finished school in 2001. And I think I did it in year 9 or 10. So that was like 98/99. Surely there are other books/plays to study by now? Crikey.

I like it. Read it with my children and they really liked it - great to have somthing that's so accessible.

I kind of disagree, I think it’s a good play for study at GCSE level and I enjoyed it when I did it. However, it’s maybe a little dated and obvious. I do like the suggestion that the Inspector isn’t a real police officer but rather some avenging angel.

Oh, Eric rapes Eva but is remorseful afterwards, so all is fine. Mr and Mrs Birling, however, are disgraceful characters with no hope of redemption. Even though comparatively, their actions weren’t too bad.

We teach A Taste of Honey at my school instead. Not going to lie, I don't love that either, but I think I marginally prefer it to An Inspector Calls.

Yanbu, I studied it for 3 years in school I'm pretty sure I burnt it after my exams. Awful!

Bottom line, it’s no Macbeth, which is an absolute belter.

I agree -my eldest did it in 2019 and thought it a bloody awful play. I couldn’t understand why it was still on a GCSE syllabus.
Mind you, I’d have thought it easy to teach the themes, since Priestley hits you over the head with them relentlessly 😂

It’s so dull. I did it for my GCSE in 1991. Shocked to hear my nephew is doing it for his GCSEs. There must be a better play by now.

DS is doing this for gcse English. I've never read it. Good to hear all the comments though.

We studied it when I was about 13 and I thought it was very clever. The social commentary went completely over my head, though.

I remember one girl reading it aloud to the class and saying, “don’t be an arse, Gerald”, because she’d misunderstood the word “ass”.

I remember that one of the young men (Eric? Gerald?) talked about wanting “a bit of fun”. The teacher asked us all what they thought he meant. I didn’t know. One boy suggested he might be talking about knocking on doors and running away. The teacher thought that Eric/Gerald might be a bit old for that. Looking back, I’m surprised the teacher didn’t piss himself laughing.

I had to endure this steaming pile of clichéd nonsense.

If I'd hadn't already got a love of reading, this would have put a stake through the heart, buried it in concrete and then dumped it offshore.

A plague on Z for Zachariah and it's magic shop too.

At the time it was published it would have had more impact. I had forgotten that it was by JB Priestley and premiered in Moscow.
As a play it is better than flat on the page as is said up thread.
With acknowledgement to Wikipedia.
The London opening must have been powerful Ralph Richardson and Alec Guinness.

I did it at school. It was absolutely fundamental in shaping the way I think about communities and politics

Did it at school. Had a wonderful teacher but I hated the play.

I remember watching the play I don’t get the hype. We did Of mice and Men .. totally overrated in my view. Oh and blood brothers

hate it

I hate it too. Can't understand why it's studied for GCSE. It gives such a simplified view of social class - it could have been written by Angela Rayner.

I loved the play and we went to watch it when I was at school.
However I did that play for GCSE in 1996 and absolutely couldn't believe it when I found out my daughter was doing it in 2022 for her GCSE!

Blimey, do they rotate GCSE texts? I did AIC and Macbeth in about 2000 or so. And a load of bloody Carol Ann Duffy poems.

I like Macbeth except for that ‘no man of woman born can harm Macbeth’ bit.

I had a c-section last month and I definitely still feel like I’m a woman who gave birth thank you very much

OP - I feel your pain. In my early years of teaching I think I taught it every year and saw that bloody annoying National production about 6 times. Luckily my current school does the CIE IGCSE so our texts change every three years and there’s good stuff like Purple Hibiscus and a more international focus. It’s interesting for about five minutes but has zero subtlety or depth.

The Woman in Black is on the curriculum now isn’t it? I’d much prefer that.

I took my DS to see it just before covid as he was studying it. I enjoyed it and lots of topical themes. But I can imagine teaching the same thing year after year must be awful. It would be better if the exam boards gave a wide range of texts to choose from so you could vary it. But I guess that's never going to happen!

YABU It’s a very good period piece. Yes it’s perhaps rather predictable to a modern audience but that’s because are perceptions are more sophisticated and we are more used to plot twists and turns.

@WheelieBinPrincess it’s not the fact you’re a woman, it’s the birth but. Technically birth is a noun. Macduff’s mother is a woman. But he wasn’t ‘born’ in the most pedantic of senses.