Gerald Croft key quotations and analysis

“An attractive chap about thirty; rather too manly to be a dandy but very much the easily - bred young-man-about-town”

• Charming

“You seem to be a nice well-behaved family -”

• Foreshadows upcoming events involving the Inspector

• - High class English society at the time

“They’d all be broke - if I know them.”

• Assumes the worst of people

“You couldn’t have done anything else”

• Supports the Capitalist system

• Due to his ignorance of the plight of the working class poor, an ignorance which plays like ‘An Inspector Calls’ helps to combat.

“We’re respectable citizens and not criminals”

• He uses the capitalistic method of exerting power and status onto the Inspector

“I’m sorry Sheila. But it was over and done with last Summer.”

• Had an affair

“Met her in March… the Palace music hall here in Brumley”

“Old Joe Meggarty, half - drunk and goggle-eyed, had wedged her into the corner with that obscene fat carcass of his - “

• Respectable people exploiting working class women

• The rich had a deluded self - perception

“The girl saw me looking at her and the gave me a glance that was nothing less than a cry for help … told her if she didn’t want any more of that sort of thing, she’d better let me take her out of there … We went along to the County Hotel”

“She was desperately hard up and at the moment was actually hungry”

• Direct impact to Mr Birling and Sheila

“She hadn’t a penny and was going to be turned out of the miserable back room she had.”

• Broke and homeless

“I made her take some money to keep her going there.”

“I was sorry for her and didn’t like the idea of her going back to the Palace bar.”

• Trying to help

“I didn’t ask for anything in return.”

• YA SURE ABOUT THATTTTT

“I did not install her there so I could make love to her”

• Selfishness in his desires

• Objectified

“… it was inevitable. She was young and pretty and warm hearted - and intensely grateful. I became at once the most important person in her life - you understand?”

• Vulnerability

“She told me she’d been happier than she’d ever been before - but that she knew it couldn’t last - hadn’t expected it to last”

• Limited expectations of working class’ chance in life

“That man wasn’t a police officer.” “Was it a hoax”

• A twist in the play, the man that was present, Inspector Goole, is not legally punishing more teaching them a moral lesson

Eric - it doesn’t alter the fact that we all helped to kill her

“But is it a fact?”

“You all admitted something to do with a girl. But how do you know it’s the same girl”

“How do you know it’s the same photograph?”

• Differs responsibility

• Questioning the credibility