After the opening scene of An Inspector Calls how's the audience prepared for the rest of the play?

    Mr. Birling is the main character who sets up the play and also initiates the chain of events that led to Eva Smith’s Death. From Mr. Birling’s speeches in which he mentions some of the most significant events in the 20th century will never happen. Including the First World War “or a few German officers have too much to drink and begin talking nonsense, you’ll hear some people say that wars inevitable”. And also the Titanic “ Every luxury - and unsinkable absolutely unsinkable”. The audience knows that what Mr. Birling is saying is wrong and begin to wonder if he’s so wrong about this how can anything he say be right? This question is answered in the Inspectors final speech. In the first scene Mr. Birling says, “You’d think that everybody has to look after everybody else, as if were all mixed up together like bees in a hive – community”. Then in the Inspectors final speech he says, “we don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.” Mr. Billing’s last shred of credibility is gone, everything that he has said has been wrong.

   Mrs. Birling is from a higher social back round than her husband Mr. Birling. When the inspector questions her later in the play she uses this to place herself above the situation. When we learn that she refused the girl Eva Smith help she refuses to take any responsibility for her suicide or turning down her appeal for help. Mrs. Birling’s actions in the first scene of the play do not help to set up later events.

   We can tell from early in the play that Gerald has been up to something and that Shelia doesn’t quite know what it is. “Yes except for all last summer”. “I’ve told you I was awfully busy at the works all that time”. “Yes that’s what you say”. From this we know that something has been going on but we don’t know what. This is the most direct link to events later in the play.

   The first Scene is the most important one in the play and links to all of the main events including the story of Eva Smith which is revealed by each of the characters by the role’s that they played that led to her eventual suicide. Mr. Birling’s speeches reveal important hints to what is going to happen later on in the play. The inspector’s final speech brings the points that Mr. Birling made at the beginning of the play. This speech contradicts everything that Mr. Birling said in his speeches and signals what the audience thinks is the end of the play. The characters’ after drawing the conclusions that someone had played a cruel trick on them, reassure themselves that they have done nothing wrong and that they would keep the ordeal to themselves. But when the phone rings and an inspector tells them that a girl has died in the infirmary and wants to ask them questions, they are in shock. This raises the question who was inspector Goole? And weather he could be a form of conscience that try’s to wake the Birling’s from their dream world in which they can do no wrong. The inspector does thin in his final speech, contradicting all of the Birling’s beliefs.