Birling audience war talk i trouble labour prosperity

Text	The Dinner Party: Mr Birling’s Wisdom In one of the longest speeches of the opening section Mr Birling offers Sheila and Gerald some advice: ‘There’s a good deal of silly talk about these days – but – and I speak as a hard-headed businessman […] I say ignore all this silly pessimistic talk […] there’s a lot of wild trouble about possible labour trouble in the near future. Don’t worry. We’ve passed the worst of it’}} ‘Just because the Kaiser makes a speech or two, or a few German officers have too much to drink and begin talking nonsense, you’ll hear some people say that war’s inevitable. And to that I say – fiddlesticks!’. Why a friend of mine went over this new liner last week – the Titanic – she sails next week – and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’. And all of this to say: ‘There’ll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere’. Each of these examples is what is called dramatic irony: there is a slippage between what the character says and what the audience knows to be true. In other words, we know something they do not. For example, when Birling says that there would be no labour trouble a 1945 audience would be only too aware of the 1926 General Strike and they would be only too aware of the war that did take place and which most of them fought in. They would also know that the Titanic did sink and that there certainly was not ‘peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere’. What is especially interesting is the derision with which Birling speaks of those who disagree with him. The lexical choice of ‘fiddlesticks’ in relation to the war would have been especially infuriating for an audience who had just lived through a war and almost certainly known people who had died in it. To speak of the war in such a flippant manner would have, to say the least, aggravated the audience. Notice also the polysyndeton used in the sentence ‘There’ll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere’: the abundance of conjunctions would have only served to heighten the mounting anger as the audience is forced to listen to Birling list things that did not happen. By utilising dramatic irony in this manner Priestley is able to open Birling up to ridicule: the audience immediately assume he is not only an idiot, but also a character to be reviled. Birling is created in such a way as to be a caricature of the typical Edwardian capitalist. {{Priestly seeks to undermine these capitalist values by associating them with a character such as Birling and as such disrupt the entrenched ideology that he represents and propagates.}} This point is made even more explicit later in this same section and immediately before the Inspector arrives when Birling declares: ‘But what so many of you don’t seem to understand now, when things are so much easier, is that a man has to make his own way – has to look after himself – and his family too, of course, when he has one […] But the way some of these cranks talk and write now, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive – community and all that nonsense […] a man has to mind his own business and look after himself’. This is exactly the mentality that Priestly seeks to critique: that a person is willing not only to abdicate his own responsibility, but also chastise those who have retained it is precisely the problem with society as Priestly sees it. The moral lesson that the plays seeks to impart is the necessity of acting as part of a wider ‘community’: it is not ‘nonsense’, but the only way to ensure that history does not repeat itself and this is what Priestly sought to enshrine through Attlee’s Labour Party. Notice also how Birling mentions his family almost as though they were an afterthought: not only does he abdicate his civic responsibility, but also his familial one. Birling is everything that is wrong with society: he is the apotheosis of the Edwardian ideology that ultimately resulted in war. He is not only hard headed, but also hard hearted and cares only for himself.

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The Dinner Party: Mr Birling’s Wisdom

In one of the longest speeches of the opening section Mr Birling offers Sheila and Gerald some advice: ‘There’s a good deal of silly talk about these days – but – and I speak as a hard-headed businessman […] I say ignore all this silly pessimistic talk […] there’s a lot of wild trouble about possible labour trouble in the near future. Don’t worry. We’ve passed the worst of it’}}
‘Just because the Kaiser makes a speech or two, or a few German officers have too much to drink and begin talking nonsense, you’ll hear some people say that war’s inevitable. And to that I say – fiddlesticks!’.
Why a friend of mine went over this new liner last week – the Titanic – she sails next week – and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’.
And all of this to say: ‘There’ll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere’.
Each of these examples is what is called dramatic irony: there is a slippage between what the character says and what the audience knows to be true. In other words, we know something they do not.
For example, when Birling says that there would be no labour trouble a 1945 audience would be only too aware of the 1926 General Strike and they would be only too aware of the war that did take place and which most of them fought in. They would also know that the Titanic did sink and that there certainly was not ‘peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere’.
What is especially interesting is the derision with which Birling speaks of those who disagree with him. The lexical choice of ‘fiddlesticks’ in relation to the war would have been especially infuriating for an audience who had just lived through a war and almost certainly known people who had died in it. To speak of the war in such a flippant manner would have, to say the least, aggravated the audience.
Notice also the polysyndeton used in the sentence ‘There’ll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere’: the abundance of conjunctions would have only served to heighten the mounting anger as the audience is forced to listen to Birling list things that did not happen.
By utilising dramatic irony in this manner Priestley is able to open Birling up to ridicule: the audience immediately assume he is not only an idiot, but also a character to be reviled.
Birling is created in such a way as to be a caricature of the typical Edwardian capitalist.
{{Priestly seeks to undermine these capitalist values by associating them with a character such as Birling and as such disrupt the entrenched ideology that he represents and propagates.}}
This point is made even more explicit later in this same section and immediately before the Inspector arrives when Birling declares: ‘But what so many of you don’t seem to understand now, when things are so much easier, is that a man has to make his own way – has to look after himself – and his family too, of course, when he has one […] But the way some of these cranks talk and write now, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive – community and all that nonsense […] a man has to mind his own business and look after himself’.
This is exactly the mentality that Priestly seeks to critique: that a person is willing not only to abdicate his own responsibility, but also chastise those who have retained it is precisely the problem with society as Priestly sees it.
The moral lesson that the plays seeks to impart is the necessity of acting as part of a wider ‘community’: it is not ‘nonsense’, but the only way to ensure that history does not repeat itself and this is what Priestly sought to enshrine through Attlee’s Labour Party.
Notice also how Birling mentions his family almost as though they were an afterthought: not only does he abdicate his civic responsibility, but also his familial one.
Birling is everything that is wrong with society: he is the apotheosis of the Edwardian ideology that ultimately resulted in war. He is not only hard headed, but also hard hearted and cares only for himself.

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