An Inspector Calls

        The inspector is extremely commanding in his speech and in his personal presence, he has a solid, larger than life presence. On his entrance he creates an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness. I think a large role of the inspector was to try and mould the Birlings Morals into the right places, also making the audience think about how thoughtless, little things can affect another person’s future. The inspector wants to make the Birlings feel guilty and remorse about the part they played in Eva Smiths death. He succeeds with the Birling ‘children’, Sheila and Eric but the others showed no remorse and have not learnt their lesson.

        By making Eva Smith out to be a ‘very pretty’ and vulnerable girl the audience start to crate a sympathetic bond for Eva. The inspector carries on and makes the Birling feel worse ad appear more heartless than they already are by saying ‘ I think it would do us all a bit of good if sometimes we tried to put ourselves in the places of these young women counting their pennies in their dingy back bedrooms.’ Goole is now a focal point for the audience’s sympathy toward Eva as well as the moral and dramatic backbone of the play.

        Goole speaks ‘coolly’ and ‘impertubaly.’ His language is often blunt but then sometimes deliberatly harsh ‘two hours ago a young woman died in an infirmary. She’d been taken there this afternoon because she’d swallowed a lot of disinfective. Burnt her insides out, of course.’ Birling points out later in the play along with some more commets about the inspector that ‘just repeating it shakes you a bit and that’s what he ha to do. Shake us at once and then start questioning us untill we didn’t know where we were.’

        After the inspector leaves there is a lot of questioning into the play as to what the inspector really was. There is a almost infinate number of who or even what the inspector could be. This is another dramatic devise to leave the audience pondering about the inspector. His name Goole suggest that he is a ghost, a voice of their hidden consciences. He is there to warn them that the girl isnt dead yet but the Birlings think ‘it’s a hoax of some kind.’

        In my personal view the inspector entered the play just after everyone had come together after the Second World War as part of a conscience, mainly for Eric and Sheila to learn from their irresponsibiloities, Eric’s irrisposible behaviour was his drunkenness and letting himself get that far out of control. Sheila being in a ‘furious temper’ demanded to have a girl sacked without thinking of how that could change her life. If it was for Eric and his drunken behaviour then Eva wouldn’t have found the need to go to the Woman’s charity for help and if Mrs Birling hadn’t been so stubborn then the organisation could have helped Eva.

        The ispectorsnfinal speech is the key point in the play. Priestly grabs the audiences attention by ‘but just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone, but there are millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us’. Priestly uses adjectives and repetition to to give a little more depth and add emphasis on his very last speech. He uses…’their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering’…which is like what we think say and do. The inspector entered on a happy occasion in the Birling house but leaves the family in devestation.