The First World War Essay Example for Free

The First World War Essay We dont live alone. We are all members of one body. We are responsible for each other. What is Priestleys main aim in An Inspector Calls? How successfully does he achieve it? John Boynton Priestley was a committed socialist. He was born in 1894 in Bradford and his mother died the same year. Priestley was raised by his father, who was also a passionate socialist. At the age of fourteen he became a junior clerk at a wool firm in his home town, before joining the army in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War. During his time spent fighting in France, Priestley developed a strong sense of the class divisions that were an integral part of the capitalist system; I went into that war free of any class feeling, no doubt I came out with a chip on my shoulder; a big heavy chip, probably some friends thigh bone. Priestley grew to hate the way a few rich and greedy businessmen and industrialists exploited and abused the working classes, for the sake of greater profits. In Priestleys mind, it was simply the nature of this society which had made war in 1914 inevitable. As a socialist, Priestley believed that wealth should be equally distributed amongst the population, and that this could be achieved by the state ownership of the fundamental means of production, therefore abolishing the need for an upper class of capitalists. Priestley hoped that World War One had shown people that their way of life needed to change, but even though military service had caused much upheaval, soon, things had reverted back to the way they had been. When war broke out again in 1939, Priestley could see that the lessons of the first war had not been learnt, and felt that society had to change drastically. With this in mind, at the end of the Second World War after successfully publishing other plays and novels, Priestley wrote An Inspector Calls. He anticipated that the public, with the benefits of hindsight, would now be more receptive to his socialist ideas; This brings us to the second and more truthful way of looking at this warto regard this war as one chapter in a tremendous history, the history of a changing world, the breakdown of one vast system and the building up of another and better one theres nothing that really worked that we can go back to but we cant go forward and build up this new world order unless we begin to think differently, and my own personal view, for what its worth, is that we must stop thinking in terms of property and power and begin thinking in terms of community and creation.