play. The Birlings are shown to be guilty in various degrees of the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, sloth, gluttony, envy, covetousness, lust and anger), as the Inspector shows when he says to Shelia Birling, ’you might be said to have been jealous of her’.
Inspector Goole is one of the central characters in J B Priestley’s play, ‘An Inspector Calls’. The reader however, is left wondering at the end of the play, if the inspector ever really existed. Some may feel he was more
like a supernatural phenomenon. J B Priestley uses the character of the inspector to expose the evil within the other characters.
A catalyst is someone or something that facilitates change. The inspector certainly changes the views and opinions of some of the characters within the play, this being J B Priestley’s intention. The purpose of the inspector is to delve into the conscience of each of the characters. Inspector Goole is convincing as a police inspector as he is always in control, ‘But some things are left to me. Inquiries of this sort, for instance’. Again this is deliberate as Priestley needs a character that can take control of a situation in order to make people think carefully about the way they behave. Throughout the opening scenes of the play inspector Goole interrogates the other characters, he tells them, ‘It’s my duty to ask questions’. Their responses to his questioning show that they are considering decisions and actions they made in the past.
Inspector Goole is the catalyst for the evening’s events: he is described as creating, ‘an impression of massiveness, solidity, and purposefulness’. He brings these qualities in to the way he conducts his enquiry. He claims to know very little, ‘I see. Mr Croft is going to marry Miss Sheila Birling? He cleverly draws conclusions from the most secretive and hypocritical of people such as Mrs Birling. We learn that Sheila Birling regards the inspector, ‘wonderingly and dubiously!’ She notes that no one told the inspector anything he did not already know.
Priestley created the character of the inspector in such a way so that the audience would find him credible. We are told that inspector Goole had a, ‘disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses.’ This makes the other characters nervous, Mr Birling in Act One tells the Inspector, ‘I don’t like that tone’. Consequently their nervousness would make the audience believe they had something to hide, or were involved in the death of Eva Smith.
As mentioned earlier, one of the main themes of this play is that of responsibility. Many of the characters have not always acted responsibly. Priestley uses inspector Goole to make the other characters acknowledge the consequences of their actions, Sheila proclaims, ‘probably between us
we killed her’. In this respect he is a catalyst. He does however, have more success and the desired effect upon the Birling children Eric and Sheila. In Act Three the audience hear Eric cry unhappily, ‘My God- I’m not likely to forget’.
Sheila is the character who develops the most in this play. Without the intervention of the inspector this most likely would not have happened. Shelia admits to her shameful behaviour and takes responsibility for her actions towards Eva Smith, confessing, ‘he’s giving us the rope- so that we’ll hang ourselves’. By doing so her moral integrity grows. Shelia almost becomes inspector Goole’s partner in the enquiry, ‘Go on, Gerald. Don’t mind mother’. Unlike her father when shown the photograph of Eva she does not deny knowing her. Her support towards the Inspector annoys her parents and evokes them to make the comment, ‘you’re behaving like a hysterical child.’ Priestley uses the Inspector to split the family. The Birling children are the first to accept guilt. Mr and Mrs Birling take a much longer time to acknowledge that they have acted inappropriately. Mrs Birling boasts, ‘I was the only one of you who didn’t give in to him’.
When Eric is revealed as the father of Eva’s child, he is affected in a similar way to his sister, ‘Oh- my God! – how stupid it all is!’ By his obvious distress the audience would be left in no doubt that he acknowledges that he has not always been responsible. Mrs Birling appears untouched by the Inspector’s questioning and it is only when she is faced with the realisation that her actions have led to the death of her grandchild that she acknowledges any responsibility. Gerald Crofts ‘easy manner’ is disrupted by the Inspector. He is distressed by his realisation of his part in Eva Smith’s/Daisy Renton life and death, and at the end of the play he appears to accept his involvement. Arthur Birling is moved to anger by the Inspector but is not affected when he is confronted. It is not until the final scene when he receives the telephone call to say an Inspector is about to arrive, ‘a police inspector is on his way here – to ask some – questions‘ that he realises that they will have to go through a repeat of the evening’s events. The Inspector lets the audience and characters know that although Arthur Birling started it all they are all responsible for the death of Eva Smith. The Inspector delivers the message that Priestley wants the audience to understand, that of shared responsibility.
Priestly uses the role of the Inspector as a dramatic device. He is the narrator and he unifies the structure of the play. For the audience the Inspector sums up what has happened so far, ‘But just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone – but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths’. When the enquiry appears to be going off track he steers
it back again. He annoys and irritates Mr and Mrs Birling with his comments and questions. The way in which he interrogates them is very good and this style gets them to supply information to him which they would not normally disclose. The Inspector becomes tough when he has to. We see him coming in to direct confrontation with Arthur Birling; he never gives up because his sole purpose is to make the characters understand that they must take responsibility for their actions. He is the perfect catalyst for this as this was Priestley’s main intention when he wrote the play.
