 With the English Literature GCSE exams kicking off in less than two weeks, lots of you have basically asked if I could make a revision video, basically summarizing an Inspector Calls, and especially for those of you who maybe have left to revision until absolute last minute, what are the main context, themes and quotations. Remember, if you forget everything else. So in this very, very brief lesson, what I want to do is present to you guys the top three context points you can remember and use for any Inspector Calls essay, as well as the top four themes when it comes to Inspector Calls and the main quotations, two quotes for all six characters in this play. So let's begin with context. Now, if you forget everything else, make sure you commit these three context points to memory. The first thing is, remember that Priestley wrote this play as a socialist message because he himself was a socialist, and he wrote this play to criticise capitalism as being one of the major driving factors that made society unstable. Remember that he based the play just two years before the first World War, however, when he wrote the play, two World Wars had already happened, and one of his solutions was the state, especially the UK moved towards a more socialist, equal state, things would be far more peaceful. That's the first context point, but remember that the second context point is he did set the play in 1912, which is the Edwardian era. The Edwardian era had very deep class divisions, and of course Priestley is writing this play also to illuminate and to highlight these deep class divisions, to show us as the audience how devastating these class divisions were on people like Eva Smith and Daisy Renton. The third key context point is, remember that Priestley, although he himself had never said he was a feminist, this play is a very strong feminist message, okay? It has an incredibly strong feminist message because it wanted to use all the female characters, Edna, Eva, Daisy, Sheila and Mrs. Belling to highlight the inequality that women faced at this time, and to obviously make us as the audience empathize with them. Remember that women did not get the right to vote until 1918, and of course you can see that the men in this play really abuse and exploit their power in relation to the women. If you forget everything else to do with context, make sure you just memorise those three context points and you'll be absolutely fine for the upcoming exams when it comes to an inspector calls. Now let's go over the four main themes for an inspector call. Starting with age, remember that Priestley, he was very pessimistic when it came to the older generation. He believed when it came to this theme that it would be the younger generation that would create change, okay? Remember that Mrs. Belling are presented as the older generation, their reaction is what Priestley would expect, i.e. they want to keep society exactly the same, but actually it is Eric and Sheila who are part of the younger generation that want to inspire change, they want to change and become better and create more equality with people like Eva Smith and Daisy Renton. That's the first thing. The second thing of course is to do with class. He wanted to show the devastating impact that the exploitation of poor working-class women like Eva Smith and of course even more broadly men working-class men like the John Smiths that the inspector relates to, how devastated their lives were. This play was to do with class and how class divisions had devastating impacts on the working-class and the poor, okay? So Priestley wants to level the class hierarchy and he wants things to become more equal. That's the second main theme. The third theme of course is to do with gender very closely related to this position that women had in society during the Edwardian era. Remember that the women in this play are all taken advantage of to some extent. Of course the person who's most worst treated, okay, the worst treatment goes to Eva and Daisy. However, Sheila is also cheated on, okay? So she also experiences infidelity from Gerald. Even her parents tried to force her into marrying him again towards the end, okay? So she really didn't have that many rights and she was expected to just forget that her boyfriend basically or her fiance basically ghosted her. But equally think about Mrs. Berling and the fact that she even set up the charity, but this was a bit of a hypocrite, she also set up the charity because she knew how difficult life was for women and especially working class women. So gender is a really important theme, okay? The final theme to remember is to do with social responsibility. Remember that Priestley's message to rich people is that it wasn't a choice, it was a duty. They had a social responsibility to use their resources, the money, the wealth, the status to help the poor. It's not a choice, it is a social responsibility, it's duty. That's theme. Now let's talk about 12 quotations to remember. The reason I've chosen 12 quotes is because there are six main characters. You've got Mr. Berling, Sheila Berling, Mrs. Berling, Eric, Gerald, as well as the inspector. Therefore, these quotations are basically two quotes per character, okay? So let's go over them. If you forget everything else, make sure you remember these two quotations for each character and you'll be absolutely fine for the upcoming exams. Let's start with Mr. Berling. Firstly, when he says Titanic, unsinkable ellipsis, here we can see that it's totally out of touch with society. His head is up in the clouds. It's a loop and myopic. Also, he mentions and justifies his treatment of Eva Smith by saying that it was his duty to keep labour costs down again here. Well, this illustrates he doesn't see Eva as a human being. He dehumanizes her. He just simply sees her as labour. The third quotation which relates to Sheila, and of course, this illustrates that already she's changing, okay? She's starting to actually see people who are working class as human beings. She criticizes the dad by saying these girls aren't cheap labour. They're human beings, okay? This obviously illustrates that Sheila as part of the younger generation thinks very differently to her father. The fourth quotation illustrating that Sheila decides to change, and this is taken from Act 3, is when she criticizes the family, she says there's nothing to learn and there's a repetition of the word nothing. We can see that Sheila is deeply critical and disgusted with her family's reaction to the inspector not being real. She wants to change, she feels very remorseful. Now, the next set of quotations are related to Gerald Croft. The first quote which is incredibly ironic is when the inspector arrives and Gerald tells him that we're respectable citizens, ellipses, criminals, okay? More specifically, we're respectable citizens, not criminals. This is deeply ironic because Gerald thinks firstly that he's above the law. Secondly, he has this very high opinion of himself, but actually he is very immoral as a person. The second quotation, of course, is when we learn that he took advantage of Daisy had her as his mistress because she was the most important person in her life. He loved having the power that he had over Daisy Renton. The next set of quotations are related to Mrs. Berling. Forget everything else, remember these two quotes for Mrs. Berling. Firstly, when she horribly relates to Daisy Renton and says, girls of that class, even she uses this noun, we call it a diminutive noun. She's talking about her as if she's a girl, not a grown woman. Here we can see that she's deeply hypocritical and she looks down on working class women. The second quotation is, of course, when she justifies refusing any aid to Daisy because she didn't pertinently ellipses may use of our name. Here again, we can see that Mrs. Berling is far more loyal to her class than her gender. She understands how difficult life is for women. They have no rights. However, she still wants to side with her family name than to maybe see things from Daisy's perspective. The next two sets of quotations are for Eric. If you forget everything else, remember these two quotes for Eric. The first is when he admits that when it came to his rape of Daisy, he didn't remember ellipses, hellish thing. I didn't even remember that's the hellish thing. Now, of course, here, when he's speaking, we can see that Eric realises that he was very, very selfish and actually very horrible towards Daisy. Okay, so he used his power and he exploited her as a woman and, of course, she was a prostitute at this stage when he met her. The second quotation, which also shows that Eric arguably changes the most out of all the characters in the play, maybe closely followed by Sheila, is at the end when he says, you know, maybe let me solve that nicely, but I can't. Here, we can see that Eric decides to take responsibility for his actions and he wants to change. The final two quotations are to do with Inspector Gore. Firstly, he talks about how his parting message to the Berling family is that there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths. He repeats millions three times, says, Okay, you guys may have treated Eva and Daisy Renton really badly, but actually, you can redeem yourselves. There's lots of other poor people that you can help out in society today. And, of course, the final parting message is really, really powerful. And, of course, it also places him in the kind of godly position, in case he's borrowing language from the Bible, is when he says we're members of one body, almost like the Eucharist that's given to Catholics in church. What he's basically reminding everybody, especially upper class people, is their actions affect other people, such as poor working class people. But also, most importantly, they have a duty and a responsibility to help the poor. So, guys, this is literally a crash course. And everything to remember when it comes to an inspector calls, if you forget everything else, make sure you commit these three context points to memory, these four theme points, as well as, of course, these 12 quotations, two for each of the main characters. Thanks so much for listening.