with close reference to act1 state why the town officials are concrned that the government inspector is coming to visit their province. In doing so show how humor is used in the narration
The town officials know that their town will appear far from "normal" to the inspector. They move to remove the eccentricities and rather benign corruption of the town. Here is where the humor comes in. The Mayor tells the Judge to keep the courthouse in line because his watchmen have been raising geese there, there are always clothes hanging in his chambers, and his district assessor always smells bad. The Mayor then sighs that he knows he has his own “little indiscretions” (222) but that’s how the Lord created people. Worried, the Judge asks if openly taking bribes is a problem, but the bribes, he says, are only puppies. The Mayor shrugs and says that at least he himself is a believer; the Judge is not. The Mayor tells the Inspector of Schools to corral his teachers, whom he finds very odd and too radical. He once saw one of them making very strange faces, and he wouldn’t want the inspector to be offended. He also saw the history teacher get so worked up about what he was talking about that he smashed chairs. The Inspector of Schools sighs that he has tried to point these things out but nothing works. He doesn’t envy teachers, who are always “scared of putting a foot wrong” and that “everyone wants to prove he’s as smart as the next man” (224). The Mayor doesn’t care about that, and his thoughts go back to how the inspector will be incognito.
