Inspector Calls Quotations

Question 1

Opening

Answer 1

• pink and intimate; brighter and harder
• evening dress
• pleased with themselves

Question 2

Birling before the Inspector arrives

Answer 2

• rather portentous man
• lower costs and higher prices
• the Germans don’t want war
• unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable

Question 3

Mrs Birling before the Inspector arrives

Answer 3

• cold
• when you’re married you’ll realise that men with important work to do sometimes have to spend nearly all their time and energy on their business

Question 4

Gerald before the Inspector arrives

Answer 4

• well-bred young man-about-town
• I believe you’re right sir
• that’s true

Question 5

Sheila before the Inspector arrives

Answer 5

• rather excited
• purple-faced old men
• you’re squiffy

Question 6

Eric before the Inspector arrives

Answer 6

• half-shy, half-assertive
• uneasy, sharply

Question 7

Inspector keeping control

Answer 7

• massiveness, solidity and purposefulness
• better to ask for the Earth than take it
• (dryly) I don’t play golf
• counting their pennies, in their dingy little back bedrooms

Question 8

Birling attitude

Answer 8

• yes, yes, horrid business

Question 9

Sheila attitude

Answer 9

• oh - how horrible!
• these girls aren’t cheap labour - they’re people
• you used the power you had

Question 10

Gerald attitude

Answer 10

• you couldn’t have done anything else
• we’re respectable citizens and not criminals
• dough-faced women
• notorious womanizer

Question 11

Mrs Birling attitude

Answer 11

• girls of that class
• but I didn’t know it was you

Question 12

Eric attitude

Answer 12

• (involuntarily) my god!
• (miserably)
• fat old tarts
• not the kind of father a chap could go to when he’s in trouble
• the state where a chap easily
  turns nasty

Question 13

Inspector final speech

Answer 13

• (taking charge, masterfully)
• millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths left with us
• we are all responsible for each other
• fire and blood and anguish

Question 14

Birling after the Inspector visits

Answer 14

• nothing much has happened!
• (excitedly); (triumphantly)
• nothing but an elaborate sell

Question 15

Mrs Birling after the Inspector visits

Answer 15

• he certainly didn’t make me confess
• (triumphantly)

Question 16

Gerald after the Inspector visits

Answer 16

• (slowly) that man wasn’t a police officer
• everything’s all right now Sheila

Question 17

Sheila after the Inspector visits

Answer 17

• (scornfully); (bitterly)
• I suppose we’re all nice people now
• he inspected us all right

Question 18

Eric after the Inspector visits

Answer 18

• laughs rather hysterically
• he was our police inspector all right
• [the way Birling talks] frightens me too
• treated her like an animal, a thing, not a person