Every card in Modern texts, Year 11: the story and how the play is built (An Inspector Calls option)
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- In which year is An Inspector Calls set? (year, four digits)
1912
HintThe year a famous liner sank on its first voyage.
WhyThe whole play takes place in a single evening that year, in the Birlings' house in the invented industrial city of Brumley.
- What is the Birling family celebrating when the Inspector arrives?
Sheila's engagement to Gerald Croft
HintA match that pleases her father for business reasons as well.
WhyThe play opens at the end of a celebration dinner. Gerald is the son of a rival manufacturer, so Mr Birling sees the marriage as good for trade as well as for his daughter.
- How has the young woman the Inspector is asking about died?
She has swallowed disinfectant
HintIt was suicide, and a slow and painful one.
WhyThe Inspector says he has just seen her body. The harshness of the death is kept in front of the family all evening, so they cannot think of her as a name only.
- The Inspector questions the family in this order: Mr Birling, then ____, then ____, then Mrs Birling, and last of all ____.
Sheila; Gerald; Eric
HintThe daughter, her fiance, and finally the son, who has been out of the room.
WhyEach of them turns out to have met the girl and done her harm: a sacking, a second sacking, an affair, a refusal of charity, and a pregnancy.
- After the Inspector has left, Gerald and Mr Birling each make a telephone call. What do the two calls seem to prove?
That nobody called Goole serves in the local police, and that the infirmary has had no suicide brought in
HintOne call is to the chief constable, the other to the hospital.
WhyThe older characters decide the whole evening was a hoax and start to relax. The younger two say it makes no difference to what each of them did.
- How does the play end?
A telephone call brings news that a young woman really has died, and that the police are coming to ask questions
HintIt comes as the parents and Gerald are laughing with relief.
WhyThe curtain falls on that news. The evening is about to start again, this time for real, and the audience is left to work out who or what the first Inspector was.
- How many acts does An Inspector Calls have? (number only)
3
HintFewer than a Shakespeare play.
WhyAll three are set in the same room on the same evening.
- How much time passes between one act of An Inspector Calls and the next?
None: each act carries on from the moment the last one stopped
HintThe curtain falls and rises on the same scene.
WhyThe action runs in real time in one place, with one story. The family, and the audience, get no break from the questioning.
- Act 2 ends as one character walks back into a room where everyone has just worked out his secret. Who is he?
Eric
HintHe has been out of the house during his mother's questioning.
WhyEach act ends on a moment of suspense and the next begins from it. Here the audience has understood the truth before his mother has.
- Mrs Birling met the girl after Eric did, but the Inspector questions her before him. What does this order allow to happen on stage?
She condemns the unknown father of the child before she finds out that he is her own son
HintShe says exactly what ought to be done to the man responsible.
WhyThe audience sees the trap closing before she does. If Eric had confessed first, she would never have spoken so freely.
- A detective story usually ends by naming one guilty person. How does An Inspector Calls break that pattern?
Everyone questioned turns out to share the guilt
HintCount the suspects, then count the culprits.
WhyThe play borrows the shape of a detective story and changes its point: the question is not who did it but whether they will admit their part.
1★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0001
2★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0002
3★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0003
4★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0004
5★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0005
6★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0006
7★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0007
8★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0008
9★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0009
10★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0010
11★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0011
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