An Inspector Calls
The Inspector uses this metaphor during his final speech to warn the Birlings—and the audience—of the consequences of ignoring social responsibility.
What is "fire and blood and anguish"?
In 'When We Two Parted', Byron uses this sensory, weather-related image to describe the coldness he felt during his secret breakup.
What is "The dew of the morning / Sunk chill on my brow"?
In An Inspector Calls, this character uses his superior class position to turn Eva Smith out of her job at Milwards simply because she felt smiled at.
Who is Sheila Birling?
At the very start of the play, the lighting of the Birling house is described as "pink and intimate" before shifting to this harsh, revealing tone upon the Inspector’s arrival.
What is 'brighter and harder'?
Near the end of the play, Gerald returns with news that makes the older Birlings desperately try to erase the past evening's events and pretend nothing happened.
What is discovering that Inspector Goole is a "hoax" (or not a real police inspector)?
This character describes the Titanic as "unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable," serving as a prime example of Priestley’s use of dramatic irony.
Who is Mr Birling?
This poem uses an extended metaphor of a tree being strangled by vines to represent an intense, overwhelming romantic obsession.
What is 'I think of thee!' (by Elizabeth Barrett Browning)?
In 'Porphyria's Lover', the speaker achieves complete, terrifying control over Porphyria by using this part of her own body against her.
What is her hair?
In 'Winter Swans', the heavy, tense atmosphere between the couple at the start of the poem is mirrored by the weather, specifically this physical description of the earth.
What is "the clouds had given their all / two days of rain and then a break"?
In 'Walking Away', the speaker relies on this stark, painful, animalistic verb to describe how the memory of his son drifting into independence still actively claws at his mind years later.
What is 'gnaws'?
This is the name of the charity organization where Mrs. Birling denies Eva Smith financial aid just weeks before her death.
What is the Brumley Women's Charity Organization?
This structural technique—used heavily in 'Neutral Tones' and 'Walking Away'—means a line of poetry ends abruptly with a punctuation mark, often reflecting a sense of finality or emotional pain.
What is an end-stopped line?
This verb is used by the Gerald to emphasise how Gerald viewed Daisy Renton at the County Hotel—as if she were a transaction rather than a person.
What is 'install' her?
The fictional industrial city where An Inspector Calls is set, which represents the gritty, polluted reality of pre-war corporate Britain.
What is Brumley?
In the poem 'Follower', the speaker recalls how he used to literally and metaphorically live in his father's shadow and path, described as "stumbling in his hob-nailed"...
What is 'wake'?
Sheila uses this specific noun to describe the invisible barrier her mother is trying to build between the family and the Inspector’s inquiries.
What is a "wall"?
In 'Climbing My Grandfather', the speaker navigates his grandfather's past by comparing the old man's body to this specific geological feature.
What is a mountain?
This political and economic system is fiercely defended by Mr. Birling when he says "a man has to make his own way," a worldview the Inspector is designed to dismantle.
What is Capitalism?
This structural device—used at the very end of An Inspector Calls—leaves the audience on a cliffhanger, ensuring the moral lesson of the play loops back to the start.
What is a cyclical structure?
In 'Neutral Tones', Hardy uses this specific, bleak adjective to describe the sun, suggesting that even nature itself has been drained of life and warmth by the dying relationship.
What is 'white'?
This French term refers to the structural technique Priestley uses where the action on stage happens in real-time, matching the exact duration of the audience's experience.
What is the Three Unities (specifically the Unity of Time)?
This poem uses the structure of seasonal time to reflect the length of their marriage and emphasise the speaker's increasing frustration.
What is 'The Farmer's Bride'?
'Mother, Any Distance' uses an irregular form that mimics an unravelling sonnet, breaking away from traditional rhyme schemes to reflect this thematic concept.
What is instability / breaking away from parental control / growing up?
'Eden Rock' features a poignant structural break at the very end of the poem, where this specific visual line separation isolates the final thought from the rest of the text.
What is a single-line stanza / split line? ("I had not thought it would be like this.")
This structural term describes the sudden shift in tone, mood, or argument in a poem, beautifully seen in 'Winter Swans' when the couple's hands finally "swum the distance between them."
What is a volta?