Essay on an inspector calls (Redraft)-post 1914 drama
‘An Inspector Calls’ by J.B Priestley is a play about an inspector who tries to make citizens of the community from the upper class realise that they are responsible for the welfare of others in less fortunate circumstances than their own. In this essay I will be answering the question ‘We don’t live alone. We are members of one society. What is Priestley’s main aim in ‘An Inspector Calls?’
In ‘An Inspector Calls’ J.B Priestley’s main aim is to make the characters in the play be responsible for their own actions and realise it impacts on others in the society, and he does achieve this; by using many techniques through a particular character called the ‘Inspector’. J.B Priestley makes the other characters in the play feel guilty of how they treated a girl from the lower class (called Eva Smith) unjustly.
At the start of the play the inspector scrutinises Sheila’s actions and exposes the way in which she abuses her power and status, which has a huge impact on the life of a poor helpless woman.
‘And so you used the power you had, as a daughter of a good customer and also of a man well-known in the town, to punish the girl just because she made you feel like that?’
This quote shows how Sheila Birling used her and her father’s wealth and power to make life miserable for others beneath her in terms of social class, by getting them sacked just because she felt jealous of another girl, who was much prettier than herself. It is almost as if to say that only the upper class are entitled to be beautiful and she wanted to rob that from Eva. However after the Inspector’s arrival Sheila changes when the Inspector tell Sheila how she had a hand in ruining the life of another person she regrets her actions: ‘It’s the only time I’ve ever done anything like that, and I’ll never, never do it again to anybody.’ Straight away from this we can see that Sheila Birling is already starting to feel guilty and is repenting her actions towards society, in particular towards Eva Smith. But Sheila Birling only managed to feel this guilt because of the way the writer J.B Priestley had fashioned the inspector to give speeches that would make the other characters feel guilty about what they had done. ‘Inspector [harshly]: yes, but you can’t. It’s too late. She’s dead.’ this quote clearly shows that J.B Priestley is using short sharp sentences for effect so that Sheila Birling feels the guilt that the Inspector is trying to encourage her to feel. Moreover this quote also shows how the inspector can be intimidating at times when as stage directions J.B Priestley makes the inspector say this line ‘harshly’.
In an inspector calls the writer J.B Priestley uses several techniques to enhance and show the audience of the play of the effects it has on the characters. One method the writer does use is the ‘domino effect’ of the characters’ actions; where the action of one individual character leads to another chain of events. For example when in the play Mr.Birling finds out that the girl who died was a girl who he had sacked from his company-‘she was one of my employees and then I discharged her’ soon after this line of the play the writer also involves Sheila Birling into the scandal to which she replies by saying ‘so I’m really responsible?’. As you can see Mr.Birling acts as a sort of stimulus in the play since he was the first person that the inspector accused of killing Eva Smith/Daisy Renton, after that all the other characters got involved and all the dark sins had spilled out with a lot of guilt and sympathy preached by the Inspector. The inspector’s character is very complex since he is a Police Inspector yet he does more than a police officer should.
‘I’ve had that notion myself from time to time. In fact, I’ve thought that it would do us all a bit of good if sometimes we tried to put ourselves in the place of these young women counting their pennies in their dingy little back bedrooms.’ This tells us that the writer and therefore the Inspector wants us to empathise and put ourselves in the shoes of Eva Smith so that we can feel sorry for her and so that the characters feel guilty upon the pain they imposed upon Eva Smith. Part of the Inspector’s character is that he also believes in socialism, meaning that he strongly believe that owners companies and industries along with employees like Eva should be treated equally, as humans with feelings. Largely the inspector acts as a replacement of the actual writer of the play since the writer and J.B Priestley share the same views on society and believe in the social message that we all have a responsibility, as associates of one society, we have a duty of c are to the less fortunate such as Eva Smith.
The inspector’s language is very extensive he uses different forms of the English language to create particular effects on dissimilar characters of the play. ‘Don’t stammer and yammer at me again, man. I’m losing all patience with you people.’ This quote undoubtedly shows how the Inspector tries to portray his beliefs through this sort of informal and aggressive language in this sentence the Inspector also uses persuasive language to persuade all of the Birling Family including Mr. Gerald Croft that they are all responsible for what happened to Eva Smith/Daisy Renton and that they have a duty of care for the less fortunate. ‘She wanted twenty-five shillings a week instead of twenty-two and six pence. You made her pay a heavy price for that. And now she’ll make you pay a heavier price still.’, this quote clearly shows that the inspector is talking about guilt and wants to persuade the characters in the play in feeling guilty about what they had individually done to Eva smith/ Daisy Renton. Moreover the inspector’s language in this quote ‘you see, we have to share something. If there’s nothing else, we’ll have to share our guilt.’, shows that he is trying to encourage the characters in the play to feel guilty about what they have done to Eva smith/Daisy Renton by telling them to ‘share the guilt’ of making Eva Smith’s life miserable. The inspector attributes the guilt of killing Eva Smith onto the characters by using the inclusive personal pronoun in the plural form term ‘we’- which makes it easier for character’s to accept the sin they have committed but makes them feel all the more guilty and makes them repent far more, on the case of Eva Smith. The way the inspector deposits the guilt on character’s, it acts as a trigger, which follows ‘confession’ from the other character’s in the play, ‘I went to the manager at milwards and I told him that if they didn’t get rid of the girl, I’d never go near that place again’. This evidently shows the authority the inspector has over them all because of his intelligence and his prophet-like behaviour. It also shows how strong and complex his choice of language is, since he persuades the Birling family and Mr. Gerald Croft to feel guilty of their actions. This shows that even people from working class statuses have more of a higher level of love for one another than people in the upper class who are blinded by social classification and money, -‘for lower costs and higher prices’ this pretty obviously represents the ‘moral’ message that people from a higher class in society stick to instead of sticking to the actual moral message that we are all members of one body and as one society/community we should all be responsible for each other and not be stereotypical about one another either. The inspector also uses his English, punctuation skills very well so that the characters feel even more culpable for what they had done to Eva Smith. For example, ‘yes, I’m afraid it did. It was the last real steady job she had. When she lost it-for no reason that she could discover- she decided that she might as well try another kind of life.’ J.B Priestley’s use of punctuation enables the inspector to use the ‘dash’ effectively so that although he is telling Sheila Birling the story of Eva’s life, he still makes Sheila feel very guilty of what she had committed. He does this by telling Sheila how Eva smiths life was, and then cleverly, in the middle of his speech he then-using the ‘dash’ (-)-says ‘–for no reason she could ever discover-’ this creates a great impact upon Sheila because of the brief pause and then the change of tone when this line comes up. This is because all of the speech the inspector makes is only in one specific tone whereas during this bit (-for no reason that she could ever discover-) his change of tone and pause before the sentence highlights that both J.B Priestley and the inspector want Sheila Birling and the audience to take this extract into account. By taking it into account J.B Priestley and the inspector wants Shelia Birling to feel guilty upon her actions towards Eva Smith, and therefore towards society. He wants her to realise that it was wrong for her use her power from her social status to make other, less unfortunate peoples live miserable.
