everyone seems to lie; good characters as well as evil ones engage in deceit as they attempt to conceal their feelings: beatrice and benedick mask their feelings for one another with bitter insults; don john spies on claudio and hero; don pedro and his 'crew' deceive benedick and beatrice. who hides and what is hidden? how does deceit function in the world of the play, and how does it help the play comment on life in
Mr Birling is shown to be an arrogant and confident character. With his first line in the extract given he shows a very careless and selfish attitude with the statement 'I discharged her'. Birling gives a cold attitude towards Eva Smith's life and shows that he doesn't care for her, giving himself a more noticeable selfish attitude. Birling decides to not use her name and constantly regards her as 'girl' and the fact he has to think about her time at his business shows that she wasn't important enough to him, and shows that he thinks workers and people below him don't deserve to be called by their names. Birling tries to intimidate Inspector Goole by boasting about his status and the type of people he knows, for example when Birling mentions the engagement between Sheila and Gerald Croft - a name made famous by 'Croft's limited', Birling brings this up to intimate the Inspector as Birling expects his status to buy him away from trouble and put him above the law.
He soon changes his tune once he discovers that the Inspector was a fake and quickly acquits himself from all responsibility. Gerald does everything he can to prove the inspector was not real and that Eva Smith is not dead as he even questions the whole situation by saying, ‘How do we know any girl killed herself today’. By trying to think of a way out of his guilt; he does not accept what he has done and soon lets himself off the hook. This shows that Gerald is reluctant to face up to his guilt therefore putting him in the middle of the two
The decisions one makes can influence the course of one's journey through life, all stemming from a single moment in time. In William Shakespeare's tragic play, King Lear, the title character is a flawed man whose inability to see the truth in front of him leads to his downfall. King Lear's journey through the play takes him on a path from denial to rage to isolation, leaving him, in the end, a broken fragment of the king he once was. His denial stems from his not being able to see his daughters' true colors. This denial leads to his rage, when he perceives that Regan and Cornwall are being thoughtless of his authority.
His fingers become covered with a yellow stain and people think that he is hygienically unclean. He forces Toby to do the paper round but exploits him and does not give him his money which angers Toby (221); he has to pawn his rifles. He is referred to as a “sissy” because he initially he does not want to fight Arthur. He abuses him because he discards the almost-empty mustard bottle (171) and when Dwight strikes him despite his finger injury, Rosemary finally knows she must remove Toby from the household.
An Inspector Calls Mr Birling Priestley immediately establishes that the Nineteenth Century ideals were wrong and needed to change. He highlights this through the character of Mr Birling as in Act 1 we learn that Mr Birling is a man who cannot be trusted as his ideas are inaccurate. He does that by using dramatic irony. He delivers this message by the character Mr Birling who says: “war is impossible”. This makes the audience think that Mr Birling is wrong about everything else and he can’t be trusted.
Hamlet was trying to be clever with Polonius as he kept asking him questions that he already knew the answers to such as “…have you a daughter” pretending that he does not know that Ophelia is his daughter. Hamlet was trying to confuse Polonius, making him think he was mad and trying to make Polonius look like a fool in front of the audience. Polonius then asks “…what do you read my lord?” and Hamlets response was “words, words, words.” Then he completes later on saying “Slanders sir, for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging think amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit…for yourself sir should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward”, here we see Hamlets cleverness in insulting Polonius as he calls him old and he has a lack of understanding. Hamlet seems to be scaring the Polonius as Polonius starts stepping back as Hamlets steps near him. Then at the end, Hamlets says “These tedious old fools” which is calling Polonius directly an old fool without trying to hide it as he did before.
The inspector puzzles the readers by letting Mr Birling rant on and then acting as though all of Mr Birling’s life achievements are worth nothing. At this point we still don’t know why he is here, but he creates the impression that everyone present is guilty.
Crooks begins to antagonise Lennie, saying things such as, “Le’s say he wants to come back but he can’t. S’pose he gets killed or hurt so he can’t come back.” and, “ jus’ s’pose he don’t come back. What’ll you do then?” In the beginning these thoughts just confused Lennie, which highly amused Crooks. However, when Crooks continued to antagonise Lennie, Lennie became angry with Crooks. We see this when the author uses “he demanded” instead of, “he said”.
Without even giving the accused a chance to speak suspicion is already place upon their allegiances. This lead to the practice of blacklisting, which is the deliberate action of denying employment. Miller satires this in his play by the cruel and uncaring behavior with which the accused are treated with. They are badgered and threatened to confess to crimes they did not commit. The judges and officials refuse to listen to any defense and assume they are guilty and are just lying.