Young and old: who can change, and who never will

In the last minutes of An Inspector Calls, Gerald Croft holds up the engagement ring that Sheila gave back to him in Act Two. Everything's all right now, Sheila. Gerald is young, about thirty, and about to marry the daughter of the house. So why, when the evening ends, is he standing on her parents' side and not on hers?

Every event this video sorts is told in order in An Inspector Calls: An overview. This one splits the family down the middle.

A generation is everyone born at about the same time. The Birlings hold two of them: Arthur and Sybil, the parents, and Sheila and Eric, their grown-up children. Gerald sits between them, the young man marrying into the family. Changing, here, means hearing what you did and letting it alter what you believe. First, sort the five by guilt. Birling sacked Eva Smith from his factory for asking for higher wages. Sheila had her sacked from the shop in a temper. Gerald kept her as his mistress at the flat, and then ended it. Eric got her pregnant and gave her money he had stolen. Sybil persuaded her committee to refuse Eva help. Sorted by guilt alone, where does the line fall between young and old? Nowhere. Guilt runs straight across both generations, because Sheila and Eric harmed her just as their parents did. Guilt cannot be the line this family splits along.

Re-sort the same five by a different test: who changes. Sheila moves first, and you can hear it in Act Two, before her mother has finished defending herself. Sybil starts to explain what the girl's class makes her, and Sheila cuts in, slowly and carefully. You mustn't try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl. A wall keeps the family on one side and Eva on the other. Sheila can see it going up - which means she is no longer standing behind it. She holds on to that after the Inspector leaves. When her parents start laughing the evening off, she tells her father: It frightens me the way you talk. Her change is measured in fear, not in speeches. She is frightened because her parents have heard everything and learned nothing. Eric changes too, and you hear it in how he handles his father's words. He reminds Birling of his after-dinner warning against these cranks who tell us that everybody has to look after everybody else. Cranks was Birling's own word. Repeated back to him after the Inspector has gone, it sounds like what it always was: a politics, not common sense. Eric also tells his father why he never went to him for help. Because you're not the kind of father a chap could go to when he's in trouble - that's why. Birling answers with his own worry, the knighthood he was almost certain of. Eric laughs at him. What does it matter now whether they give you a knighthood or not? Put the two men side by side at that moment, and they are weighing one evening in two very different ways. What is Birling measuring the evening by, and what is Eric measuring it by? Birling measures it by his good name and the honours he might lose. Eric measures it by a girl who died. Two generations, one evening, two different scales.

The parents, though, do not move at all. Once Gerald's phone call to the Infirmary finds that no girl has died there today, Birling is ready to laugh. Sybil is sure her children will find it funny by the morning. Neither parent has let go of a single belief since dinner. Then there is Gerald. He is young, and he is guilty - and he does not change either. It is Gerald who argues that the Inspector may not have been a real police officer. Sybil thanks him for arguing it so cleverly, and he offers Sheila the ring as if the evening were over. Sheila will not take it back yet. The young man who should stand on her side of the split has crossed over to her parents. Birling points at his son and daughter and sneers. Now look at the pair of them - the famous younger generation who know it all. Famous is sarcasm. To Birling, learning something is a phase the young will grow out of, so the one thing his children gained is the thing he mocks. Three students try to name the line between the two sides. One says the young change and the old do not. Another says whoever can still hear what they did can change. A third says the guilty change and the innocent do not. Now, put Gerald into each of those in turn, and see which of them falls over. Which of the three still stands once Gerald is in it, and why? Rule two, the one about hearing. Gerald is young and unchanged, so the first one fails on him. All five are guilty, so the third sorts nobody at all. That sinks a tempting reading, that the young characters are good and the old ones are bad. Sheila and Eric did real harm. What marks them out is that they listened.

The line is not age, and it is not guilt. It is who can still be taught, and that is why Gerald ends the evening on the parents' side.

Priestley wrote the play in nineteen forty-five, for an audience about to rebuild a country after the war. The play's hope rests with Sheila and Eric, but not because they are young. It rests with anyone, of any age, who can still hear what they did and change. Gerald is the warning inside that hope. Being young guarantees nothing, and a young man can choose his elders' comfort over what he has just learned. Here is a question in the real exam shape to plan. How does Priestley use the younger characters to show that people can change? Plan your answer now: one claim, then the moments you would argue it from. A plan can go astray by sorting good young people against bad old ones, and Gerald sinks that on sight. It can also go astray by reading the ending as a happy one, where the children win. The telephone rings - and nobody has won anything. Here is one plan that argues, with its claim first and four moments behind it. The claim: Priestley splits the family by who can still be taught, not by age, so change is a choice the young can refuse. Lead with Sheila's wall in Act Two. She sees the defence being built and will not stand behind it. Follow with Eric turning his father's word cranks back on him, and a knighthood that no longer matters to him. Then set Gerald against them both: young, guilty, and holding out the ring as if nothing had happened. Close on Birling's sneer at the famous younger generation, moments before the telephone rings on him. One chain, five links: every link hands her on to the next. What this video asks of that chain is which of the five links can still move.

Check the split for yourself, starting with the sneer Birling aims at his son and daughter. Birling calls them the famous younger generation who know... what? It all. Famous is his sarcasm, and it mocks the one thing Sheila and Eric gained that evening. Here's Eric's answer to his father, with its ending missing. Because you're not the kind of father a chap could... How does Eric finish that line: a chap could what? Go to when he's in trouble. The split is not about who did wrong. It is about who can be spoken to. A different Birling now, one the play never wrote. Imagine that in Act Three he says quietly that he did wrong, and means it. Which side of the split does that Birling stand on, and why? With Sheila and Eric. The line is who can still hear what they did, so even the oldest person in the room could cross it. The ring Gerald holds out while Sheila refuses it is the split in one picture: young, guilty, and unchanged.

Once this one's done, and you can say why Gerald ends up with the parents, it has earned a thumbs-up. Still blurry? Explain the split to a friend in two sentences, and the gap shows itself.

Next in the chapter: Your exam, not someone else's, how each board asks about this play.

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