The play starts off with the Birling family celebrating their daughter’s engagement to Gerald Croft. The family included Mr. Birling, Mrs. Birling, Eric Birling, Sheila Birling, and Gerald Croft. Arthur Birling is glad because Gerald is the son of his business competitor and it will be a merger of businesses. Through the middle of the dinner there is a knock at the door. This is where we meet inspector Goole. He tells the family that a girl has committed suicide and that in one way or another they are responsible. Mr. Birling was responsible for sacking the girl from his factory. Sheila Birling was responsible because she got the girl sacked from a shop where she works. Eric Birling was seeing her but the broke it off, and Gerald Croft was having an affair with her but he also broke it off because she was pregnant with Gerald crofts baby. All of their morals are tested and they are all put to the test because none of them really know the truth about what they have done until the inspector brings it out of them.
Inspector Goole is mysterious. He has a way of making the characters confess to him, and to themselves, their role in Eva Smiths demise. He links the separate accounts together to form an approximate biography of Eva Smith from when she left the employment of Mr. Birling up until she commits suicide.
"We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other."
He points out that
"We have to share something. If nothing else, we'll have to share our guilt,"
and that
"Public men Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges"
to which Birling replies
"…You weren't asked here to talk to me about my responsibilities."
Contrary to what Arthur Birling believes, it is a very likely that the Inspector was sent to the Birlings to teach them about responsibility.
Mr. Birling is very much the stereotypical businessman, like many of the higher-class businessmen he doesn’t often take his mind of making profit. Even in his speech about Gerald’s engagement to his daughter. He states how
“Your engagement to Sheila means a tremendous lot to me.” “Your father and I have been friendly rivals in business for some time now – though Crofts Limited are both older and bigger than Burling and Company – and now you’ve brought us together, and perhaps we can look forward to time when Crofts and Birlings are no longer competing but working together – for lower costs and higher prices.”
This shows the greedy nature of Mr. Birling and I believe he is used as a representation of a whole lot of upper-class people. People who are out to make money and don’t care about anything else as he said
”I am a hard-headed businessman.”
Using this social stereotype makes it easier for the audience to relate these characters to real life.
By Gerald giving a ring to Sheila her whole mood changes to that of excitement and delight. This shows how the upper classes attach so much value to priceless objects. Gerald covers up anything he has done wrong by giving the ring, more than as a sign of love. It was probably more to do with guilt form his affair with Eva. Gerald him self is more than it seems to us, he in a way is just like the Birlings, he also desires wealth.
As we go further in to the story past the death of Eva smith we find that most of the things Mr. Birling says are ironic! “Titanic is unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable",
That "The Germans don't want a war. Nobody wants a war”
And that "we're in for a time of increasing prosperity"
Give that audience the impression that his views of community and shared responsibility are misguided also. Every one of the predictions Birling makes are wrong; the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage, World War one broke out two years after the play was set and the American stock market crashed in 1929, plunging the world into economic chaos. This leads us to regard him as a man of many words but little sense! Ironic in a way that the audience knew all this. This just shows the hard-headedness and realism of the play, the ordinary person would say things that he believed.
My conclusion is that the Birling’s do not learn to take responsibility for them selves and should not think in a way that they should not only “look after number one” but also to see what they have done wrong.