An Inspector Calls - Social message.

GCSE NOTES: An Inspector Calls

THEMES: An Inspector Calls

SOCIAL MESSAGE

In this play, J.BB. Priestley presents us with a sincerely felt and powerfully expressed social message.

We are shown the comfortable home and rich way of life of the Birling family.
By contrast we have the accounts of the desperate attempts of the workers to increase their poor wages and the drab and sordid life that the girl is forced to live as a result of the actions of the people such as the Birlings.
The Inspector champions the cause of the poor.
He tries to get the others to accept that all the people share a common humanity and so are all part of an interdependent community.

This message does seem to get through to Sheila and Eric. Sheila is ready to accept and demonstrate this feeling of compassion, but her father simply dismisses the idea of a community, in which responsibility and guilt are shared, as the foolish muttering of a socialist crank.

MORALITY

As the play progresses, the Inspector’s point is put across more and more forcefully.

Each character’s involvement with Eva Smith / Daisy Renton’s adds to the Inspector’s argument.
He becomes not only a spokesman for the disadvantages but a voice for the conscience which the Birlings and Gerald seem to lack!
The characters, especially the older ones, are increasingly shown to be hiding behind an appearance of respectability which has no foundation in any true sense of morality.

The Inspector points out what would happen if injustice and inequality were allowed to continue unchecked. His increasingly missionary tone reaches its peak when J.B. Priestley’s political message is thundered out in the Inspector’s final speech. This exaggerated oratorical style (hyperbole) might not be acceptable if J.B. Priestley had not gradually built up the mysterious and prophetic aspects of the Inspector’s character.

POLITICAL VIEW

We are never given a clear set of political policies but J.B. Priestley does make the general point that all of us have a share in the responsibility for what happens in our society, that we have a duty of care to others.

We see that the sense of respectability with which the characters surround themselves does not stand up to close examination.
The way that the older characters remain unmoved and immovable, uncaring for anyone but themselves, is one of the horrors of the play.
Each of the revelations deepens the lesson they should be learning but they refuse to take any notice.

We are left wondering whether our society today is any more likely to survive a similarly close examination. Are we any better in our everyday dealings with other people than the Birlings?

RESPONSIBILITY

Most of the characters have a narrow view of what it means to be responsible, but the Inspector provides us with a much broader one:

Mr. Birling is a businessman and as such he feels his responsibility is to make a success of his business. This means making as much profit as possible, even if that means being harsh in his dealings with those who work for him.

As a family man he sees that he has a responsibility to provide for the material needs of his family, yet it is clear that Eric does not see him as the king of father to whom he could turn when in trouble.

Mrs. Birling accepts her responsibility as chairwoman of the Women’s Charity Organisation, but only sees a responsibility to help those that she feels are deserving of help.
Sheila belatedly recognises that as a powerful customer she has an obligation not to let her personal feelings and ill-temper lead to misery for people who have no power.
Eric has little sense of responsibility. He drinks for than is good for him and he forced the girl into a relationship which had disastrous consequences. He attempted to help her by stealing from his father.
Gerald showed some sense of responsibility when he rescued the girl from the unwelcome attentions of another man, fed her and found her somewhere to live. Yet he gave in to his own desire of personal pleasure and eventually abandoned the girl without knowing, or very much caring, what happened to her.

The Inspector’s role is to shake these people up and to make them aware of that broader view of responsibility which J.B. Priestley felt was essential if the world was ever going to learn from its mistakes and become a place where everyone has the right to be treated fairly.

LOVE

The play presents a variety of thoughts about love, the nature of love and different people’s interpretation of love:

Sheila and Gerald appear to in love, they have just announced their engagement and seem happy enough contemplating a future dedicated to each other.
After each of them has confessed to their shameful behaviour towards Eva Smith / Daisy Renton, Sheila realises that they do not really know each other well and that trust is an essential ingredient in a loving relationship.
Mr. Birling’s remark about the engagement of his daughter bringing the two ...

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LOVE

The play presents a variety of thoughts about love, the nature of love and different people’s interpretation of love:

Sheila and Gerald appear to in love, they have just announced their engagement and seem happy enough contemplating a future dedicated to each other.
After each of them has confessed to their shameful behaviour towards Eva Smith / Daisy Renton, Sheila realises that they do not really know each other well and that trust is an essential ingredient in a loving relationship.
Mr. Birling’s remark about the engagement of his daughter bringing the two family firms into a closer working relationship, gives us an indication of his attitude towards love and marriage. He sees marriage as a convenient way of progressing up the social and economic ladder. This makes us wonder whether love played any real part in his marriage to the socially superior Sybil Birling and whether her coldness to others, including her own children does not have its roots in a loveless marriage.
Both Gerald and Eric have been involved with the girl, yet each of them denies that they loved her – their relationship were prompted by physical attraction.
The girl took up with Eric out of necessity, but she does, however, seem to have felt a genuine love for Gerald. Gerald’s ending of the affair may be seen as being callous in view of her love for him.

The Inspector preaches a form of love, not too dissimilar to that preached by Christ when he instructed his followers to love one another as much as they love themselves – “love thy neighbour as thyselves”. This form of love is the true “charity”, and is something which appears quite alien to women such as Mrs Birling who bask in the glory of volunteering their time to “charity” while being devoid of any true charity in their hearts.

TIME

J.B. Priestley wrote the play for an audience just coming out of the horrors of the Second World War, yet he set his play in 1912, two years before the start of the First World War and this brings us to a consideration his use of time as an element of his plays. At the end of the play we are left with a sense that the events are going to start all over again. We wonder whether things will be different and how the characters will behave.

Ouspensky’s theory

Priestely became fascinated by theories about the nature of time. Put simply, most of us see time as a straight line going from one point to another in a continuous sequence. He read P.D. Ouspensky’s book A New Model of the Universe in which it was suggested that when we die we re-enter out life once more from the beginning. We are born again in the same house to the same parents and continue to repeat all the events of our life just as before. This cycle of identical lives would go on being repeated if we changed nothing of significance. If, however, we improved in some spiritual way, we could convert the circle into a spiral of events that would, if he we continued to make significant improvements, eventually open the way for us to escape from the repetitions and into a new life in which we did not repeat our mistakes.

Dunne’s theory

J.W. Dunne was another time theorist who influenced J.B. Priestley. Dunne laid out the idea that you could be given the gift of seeing forward in time as well as looking back. This would mean that, just as you can look back and see what actions led to your present situation, you could look forward and see the consequences of your actions. So, if you wished, you could change those actions and so avoid the consequences.

An Inspector Calls contains elements of these time theories:

The Inspector, arriving before the suicide is a reality, offers each character a chance to see the consequences, to change the future, to break the circle. Eric and Sheila seem prepared to take that opportunity to face up to their past actions and to improve themselves, but the others do not.
The reflections on the past, and the possibilities of the future highlight the importance of caring for others, of taking responsibility for out actions and of considering the consequences of them.
The Inspector’s knowledge of events, apparently before they happen, his steady revelation of the character’s pasts and their links to the dead girl over a two-year period gives him a mystical, unworldly quality – what J.c. Trewin in his review of the play in the Observer in 1946 called “the angel with the flaming sword”.
The Inspector’s departure leaves the characters free to decide their future, while at the end we are left to wonder how they will cope with reliving the close scrutiny of their dealings with others when the cycle starts all over again.

By setting the play in 1912 and presenting it to a later audience, J.B. Priestley has covered an era which includes both World Wars. The failure of the older characters to learn anything reflects the failure of generations to learn form the mistakes of the recent past. There is dramatic irony in that characters talk of hopes for peace and prosperity, but we know these will not happen. By 1945, Priestley was hoping that the second time around the world might learn from past mistakes and we might see such hopes realised if we, the audience, can accept the challenge to be caring and socially aware.

STRUCTURE

This play follows the tradition of what is known as a well-made play. It has a plot in which the action flows smoothly and all the parts fit together precisely, rather like parts of a jigsaw puzzle. As a result the characters and the audience move from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge. Priestley wanted his play to have a uniformity of manner and tone with one situation rapidly moving on to the next. He felt that he could best achieve this by writing quickly, and indeed he completed this play in a week. The unities of time and place is achieved by the events all taking place in the dining room and the action running continuously through all the three Acts. Even when there is a break between Acts where an interval might be placed, the start of the next Act takes us to the same point in time at which we left the action.

The action is taken forward by the Inspector’s questioning of each character in turn. Their reasons for entering or leaving are always plausible and always allow some new aspect of the plot to be introduced or something mentioned earlier to be developed. The play is built up in a series of episodes and each character has either a leading or supporting role in each of these episodes, even in their absence. Gerald’s decision to go for a walk, for example, means that he can alter the course of events after the Inspector’s departure, while Eric’s similar absence allows his involvement with Eva Smith/ Daisy Renton to be explored in a way that it could not be if he were present. Each new revelation, prompted by the Inspector’s careful use of the photograph or information from the dairy, adds to the overall picture of those two crucial years in the girl’s life. Each part fits together and helps to complete the jigsaw of events and involvements.

As the pattern develops, the audience is able to predict what will happen next.

MOOD & STAGE DIRECTIONS

Priestley brings about quite subtle changes of mood. The play begins in a mood of high celebration, but after the Inspector’s entrance, the other characters have little reason for self-congratulation and the mood becomes more sombre, even threatening. By the time the Inspector delivers his final speech, the mood has become one that promises real danger for the future. The relief that is felt when the Inspector is seemingly shown up as a hoaxer and no evidence of a suicide can be found is shattered by the dramatic telephone call. Priestley even uses stage directions to suggest how the lighting effects can reflect the mood. He orders a “pink and intimate” use of lights for the party which changes to “brighter and harder” when the Inspector ‘s investigation begins.

TWISTS

Although the action and the time span of the play is realistic, J.B. Priestley throws in two twists at the end. Firstly we have the problem of who the Inspector really was: a trickster determined to make fools of them or some sort of avenging spirit come to make them see the evil of their ways? The second twist is the time-release mechanism when the telephone call interrupts and takes them back to relive the events. It is this which allows the possibility that the Inspector was a real policeman who has slipped out of real time and will return. If they fail to learn from their experiences and are “ready to go on in the same old way” (Act III, p. 71) the Inspector’s threat of “fire and blood and anguish” (Act III, p. 56) will become their reality.

LANGUAGE AND STYLE

The Realism of Priestley’s Language

Plays are meant to be performed, and the language of a play suggests the action which should be taking place. When reading a play we can see they way that the words also suggest a mood, and there are times when they help to group characters together, placing individuals in opposing groups to other characters. The Inspector’s passionate and heartfelt words as he prepares to leave (Act III, p.6) are reflected by the passion Sheila shows as she struggles against her parents’ complacent refusal to accept that anything has changed. The language also reveals character, and there are times when what the character says is in conflict with what the character does. Many of the characters reflect the hypocrisy which Priestley was condemning.

The play has elements of the Medieval morality play since it shows characters who are guilty of one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins, and through the Inspector Priestley hopes to point his moral out to us. The Inspector, and later Sheila, becomes the mouthpiece for Priestley’s ideas. When a writer uses his work in this way, he is being didactic or producing a polemical piece of writing. The play conforms to the three unities of the well-made play. This means that the action is focused on one story-line, that there is only one setting and that the time of action on stage is identical to the real time that the action takes. Priestley uses the conventions of the well-made play to build up the sense of mystery and suspense. The first scene gently introduces us to the main characters, and from then on each entrance or exit highlights a dramatic moment. Several scenes in turn reveal secrets and the end of each Act builds to a tense and climactic moment. The play also, of course has elements of a “whodunit” since the girl’s story is gradually revealed through the Inspector’s careful questioning of the “suspects”. The Inspector’s final speech has all the dramatic power of any scene in which a detective strips away the layers of evidence to reveal the guilty party, but Priestley then produces further twists and turns leading to the final telephone call which leaves us guessing once again.

The realism of the play, its realistic set and realistic incidents, is reinforced by the realism of the language. There is a clear no-nonsense approach to the dialogue but because the speech is so grammatically correct it does not reflect the true patterns of everyday speech in a way that a modern play by Harold Pinter or Dennis Potter would. The realism of language is, however, the realism of 1912, and though the language of Edwardian England differs in some respects to what sound natural today, there are no real problems of communication.

There is an emphasis on correct behaviour and good manners – especially in Mrs Birling’s speeches – yet the Inspector frequently interrupts characters who are not going in the direction he wishes them to go in. The interruptions balance the often lively dialogues and monologues which carry the story-line forward, but the Inspector’s interruptions and his indifference to the nicer points of polite behaviour make him stand apart from the others every bit as much as does his precise and incisive language.

We are told that the Inspector speaks “carefully, weightily” (Act I, p.10) and we can see that what he says consists largely of questions and instructions. This helps him to control, direct and develop the plot. Language helps to reinforce the Inspector’s authority. His words are often a matter-of-fact, as we would expect from a policeman, but the tone is commanding and even threatening. His final speech uses a quite different sort of language; it is the language of the prophet or the missionary and sound more like a sermon than the carefully weighed evidence of a policeman. There are times when he produces dramatic results by use of a very short and isolated sentence – or even a single word. At other times he speaks in long sentences which are broken up to produce a rhythm which gives what he says extra emphasis and makes what he says profoundly logical, e.g. “Because what happened to her then may have determined what happened to her afterwards, and what happened to her afterwards may have driven her to suicide.” (Act I, P. 14). Those words are followed by the terse comment “ A chain of events” (Act I, P. 14) and we can see that the logical sequence links up just like the links of the chain.

The language used by each character helps us to create a clearer picture of them:

MR BIRLING, we are told, is “rather provincial in is speech” (Act I, P.1) and he frequently speaks in a rather bullying and forceful manner which at times mirrors what he felt was expected of a solid, middle-class Edwardian without being really convincing. His comments about a possible knighthood and his congratulations to the cook are not in keeping with correct behaviour, but they do seem to reflect Birling’s arrogant and pompous nature.
GERALD CROFT, however, is inevitably careful and correct in what he says. For example, cleverly freeing Mr Birling from is social error about the good meal by his careful comment about being one of the family, and later using a euphemism instead of saying “prostitute”. His one lapse is in his description of Alderman Meggarty, and that may reflect the anger he felt as a result of his care for Daisy Renton.
SHEILA AND ERIC are less restrained and their use of slang expressions such as “squiffy” (Act I, p. 3) shock their parents and show us the generation gap as clearly as do their bitter comments on their parents’ behaviour.

IMAGERY

Sheila can become quite emotional, as she does when describing the events in Milwards or when she is warning her mother not to try “to build up a kind of wall” (Act II, p. 30) between the family and the girl. This is one of the most powerful images in the play, yet the Inspector also uses powerful images. Many of the images he conjures up are hard-hitting and create strong dramatic effects. In Act I he talks about how the disinfectant has “burnt her inside out” (Act I, p. 11), and he recalls the same image in Act II when he tries to shock Mrs Birling by telling her that the girl’s position is “that she lies with a burnt-out inside on a slab” (Act II, p. 46). Throughout the play the Inspector uses phrases such as “great agony” (Act I, P. 11), “died, after several hours of agony” (Act I, p 17) and died in misery and agony” (Act I, p. 28) as well as repeating short, sharp, almost brutal reminders that the girl is dead. By doing this, Priestley keeps the picture of the girl in the mortuary constantly before our eyes.

IRONY

The Inspector is even more ironic in one of his early exchanges with Mr Birling in Act I. Birling claims that it would be “very awkward” if we had to be “responsible for everything that happened to everybody we’d had anything to do with” (Act I, p. 14). The Inspector echoes Birling’s words “Very awkward” (Act I, p. 14). At first, we might think the Inspector was agreeing with Birling, but we come to realise that he is hinting that what is to follow is indeed going to become very awkward because he will show that they are responsible, and will be held responsible, for what they have done to the girl.

Much of the play’s success depend upon the dramatic irony which J.B. Priestley creates. We see this in the mistaken view that Mr Birling has about the future, his faith in technology and belief in peace. We can guess from this that his view of a man’s responsibility will be equally wrong. Similarly, when Sheila has worked out that Eric might well be the father of Eva Smith’s child, there is irony in that Mrs Birling has not realised it and is unwittingly demanding that an example should be made of none other than her own son.

Perhaps there is a different sort of irony in the fact the Inspector has been talking as much to us, the audience, as to the characters. We have to ask ourselves whether we are in a position to judge what has happened when we are probably as guilty of acting irresponsibly and unkindly as anyone of stage! The irony strengthens our feeling that J.B. Priestley’s type of socialism is not so much about politics but about caring and even, perhaps, about love.