can someone give me feedback on my paragraph about selfishness in AIC (mr b)?

Priestley uses Mr Birling as an embodiment of selfishness. When making a toast for his daughters engagement, he twists the conversation to himself and boasts about how this engagement is good for his business. He says, “lower costs and higher prices”. The juxtaposition of ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ reveals his true motive behind Sheila’s engagement: it is his chance to climb up the social ladder. Not only is Mr Birling selfish when it comes to his family, as he doesn’t even congratulate his daughter, but Mr Birling is also an injudicious character with negligible regard for the working class. He priorities wealth over the welfare of his staff. This is evident when the Inspector asks Mr Birling if he remembers Eva Smith. He replies and says, “there are several hundered young women there and y’know they keep changing”. The verb ‘changing’ displays how Mr Birling views his workers as disposable. This reinforces his selfish attitudes as he disregards the constant change and fluctuating conditions that they are forced into and he rather focuses on “making his own way”. By portraying him as a exploitative and egoistical character, Priestley is commenting on the many upper class men who proudly abused their workers rights and he is presenting how selfish and corrupt this idea is. Priestley establishes Mr Birling as an unlikeable character through his ignorance and selfishness when he makes numerous wrong predictions about the social state of the world in years to come. He says,”titanic…unsinkable, absolutely, unsinkable”. The repetition of the adjective ‘unsinkable’ combined with the adverb ‘absolutely’ creates a very confident tone which serves to heighten how much dramatic irony undermines him. Priestley attempts to remind his 1945 audience of the complete selfishness demonstrated by a real person in 1912, as the 1945 audience would know that one of the builders of the Titanic did describe the ship as ‘unsinkable’. Through the character of Mr Birling, Priestley wishes to confront the selfish, British upper class society who still used these exploitative and selfish methods of employment and promote a message of collectivism. Before the Inspectors departure, Mr Birling attempts to save himself and he says to the Inspector, “Look I’d give thousands- yes, thousands”. The repetition of the noun ‘thousands’ creates a almost pleading tone as Mr Birling is trying to save his own reputations, which emphasises how truly selfish he is. He would rather pay for the Inspectors silence then accept responsibility for Eva’s death. Even after the Inspectors departure, it is clear that Mr Birling has not learnt how harmful selfishness is. He continuously uses the collective pronoun ‘we’ like when he says “we know now that he was lying”. The Birlings' hermetic household is a bubble of wealth and avarice, a bubble the Inspector 'pops' by undermining the bravado and self-importance held by the elder Birlings. The minute the Inspector shatters their rapacious ignorance, Mr Birling begins to use the collective nouns 'we'. This shows that Arthur has begun to spread the blame and highlights his selfishness, by only using collective pronouns to protect his own reputation.

Reply 1

Matilda9121

Well done! Overall you did a great job, there are a few standout points though:

- Your use of specific quotes from the book to support your analysis was really effective. It evidenced your argument in the text and showed exactly where in the storyline you were getting your evidence from.

- You could consider expanding on the significance of Mr Birling's selfishness beyond just the character himself. For example, you could discuss how his behavior represents a larger societal issue or how it relates to the themes of the play. Perhaps even delve into how his selfishness much like the class divide at the time was endless.

- Your writing style is clear and concise, which makes your analysis easy to follow. However, you could consider varying your sentence structure and length to make your writing more engaging to read.

Here's an example of how you could vary your sentence structure:

Original: "By portraying him as an exploitative and egoistical character, Priestley is commenting on the many upper class men who proudly abused their workers rights and he is presenting how selfish and corrupt this idea is."

Revised: "By portraying Mr. Birling as an exploitative and egoistical character, Priestley exposes the many upper class men who proudly abused workers' rights as a badge of honour. This further serves to highlight how systemic classism and curroption were at the time."

- I also would suggest maybe adding some more context to the themes. You could explain why Priestley wrote the play in 1945 (War, Class Inequality, The new Middle Class, Workers Movement etc)

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 2

vsylll

thank you for the feedback! btw, i do eduqas as an exam board do context isn’t needed but i add some anyway.
alos another quick question: what grade would you think my writing is at currently?