An Inspector Calls: How are timing and stage directions used for effect?

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An Inspector Calls

‘An Inspector Calls’ is a political play written by J.B Priestly in 1945. Set it 1912, it unravels the mystery of a working class girl’s suicide and how her death was entwined with a family from a middle class background. The Birling family are Capitalists and believe that every man should look after himself, until a suspicious inspector arrives at the house and interrogates each of them as he aims to prove to them that we are all responsible for one another. Timing and stage directions are crucial to the building of suspense in this play and was one of the reasons why it was, and still it,  such as success. The author wanted to express his views about the 1912 vision of society and how socialism was going to change it all. The story of ‘Eva Smith’ reflects the injustice of Edwardian society and emphasizes the point that we should help out everyone in the community, instead of putting ourselves first. In the Inspector’s final speech, Priestly sums up socialism in a few paragraphs, including the phrase ‘We don’t live alone. We are members of one body’.

The play begins with an engagement party being held for Sheila Birling, daughter of successful business man Mr Birling, and her fiancé Gerald. Mr and Mrs Birling are at the dinner party along with their unmarried son, Eric. They are seated around the dining table in a ‘fairly large, suburban house’ which shows that the family are wealthy. The lighting is pink and intimate until the Inspector arrives, where it changes to bright and bold. This symbolises that the Birlings are looking at life ‘through rose-tinted glass’, which means that they only see the things they want to see and are oblivious to suffering, until they are brought back to reality by the Inspector. Mr Birling is described as “a rather portentous man in his middle fifties with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in his speech”. This description alone gives us a negative opinion of him as we can guess he thinks a lot of himself before he even speaks. His wife, Mrs Birling is described as “about fifty, a rather cold woman and her husband’s social superior”. This tells us that Mr Birling wasn’t always rich and upper class, and that he has obviously bettered himself. From these descriptions, we can tell they are not a very nice couple.

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In the first few minutes of dialogue, the atmosphere is merry, but slightly uneasy. Gerald is saying how long he has been trying to become one of the family, to which Sheila says “Yes- except for all last summer, when you never came near me, and I wondered what had happened to you.” We can almost guess what Gerald has been up to already, so we know that the relationship is not one based on trust and dependency. We know something is bound to go wrong and spoil the good atmosphere. Mr Birling volunteers to make a speech; he talks ...

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