Compare and Contrast the ways in which Priestley presents the attitudes of Birling and the Inspector throughout the play,

The play An Inspector Calls is set in 1912,"Edwardian England" but written and first performed in 1945. This is very significant because between these two dates humanity witnessed or encountered many times of great suffering such as World War 1, World War 2 and the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic, which gives the reader a sense of continuity, that events will happen again and again unless people learn from previous mistakes. Social position was far more important in 1912. …

…a hoax he simply wishes for things to return to the way they were before the Inspector arrived, Birling never believed there was anything to learn from past mistakes. However did men ever learn from their mistakes? It can be argued that they did suffer at the hands of fire and many men witnessed bloody scenes, which mentally scarred them for the rest of their lives, but this didn't prevent the outbreak of World War 2.