Eric – I think I’d better turn in.
Inspector – And I think you’d better stay here.
The Inspector reveals information when he is ready – not one second before, not one second later. He speaks with great strength, and has a massive amount of authority. He is very crafty and is an excellent deceiver in the way he talks. Inspector Goole questions them over and over again until eventually they confess their actions. He uses emotive language to gain the family’s attention and to make them feel very guilty, he says, “She died in misery and agony – hating life”. This in the end makes them confess and telling the truth of what they did and how it related to Eva Smith’s death. What wasn’t found out until the end of the play was the fact that not all of the family had seen the same photograph of Eva Smith:
“Birling- Gerald’s dead right. He could have used a different photograph each time and we’d be none the wiser.”
The Inspector said:
“One Eva Smith has gone – but there are millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, and what we think and say and do.”
This speech is basically the moral of the play –the outcome of our actions are so important. They can make the world a better place or they can destroy and cause damage to the people and environment around us.
To sum up the role of the inspector, you need to look at what he represents. This could change the interpretation of the whole play, An Inspector Calls. My interpretation of the inspector is that he is a godly figure in the play. He is trying to make the Birling family see the light, letting them fudge themselves before he judges them. By the end of the play it is really only Sheila and Eric who see where they have gone wrong and understand what has just happened. Mr and Mrs Birling have found it very hard to alter what they are used to, thereby moving on from traditionalism and finding a new way of thinking. Children find it easier to change than adults because they have not had long of getting used to a certain way of thinking i.e. capitalism, which is the way their parents think, especially Arthur. Priestley is saying by means of the Inspector that “We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other”, whereas capitalism is the total opposite of this – thinking about one’s self and making profits. Priestley says we should see people as individuals not just as a group of working class people who don’t matter.
The 20th Century was one of extremes. For the beginning of the Century life was worth living (for the rich), for the poor it was poverty – life was extremely tough. War led to hardships and famine. There was huge loss of life and increased poverty for all social classes. WWI and WWII challenged people’s way of thinking and their attitudes. The play was set in 1912, two years before the start of World War I but was written after World War II. Mr. Birling doesn’t think that war will come but if society carries on acting as arrogantly as when this play was set then war is inevitable. This is Priestley’s view. Sybil and Arthur Birling are traditionalists, they don’t like change. It was indeed a century of “fire” and “blood” and “anguish” as the Inspector said toward the end of the play. An Inspector Calls illustrates the restless times of the 20th Century.
Throughout the play of An Inspector Calls, J B Priestley uses the Inspector as the Birling family conscience. He is trying to get across to them that their words and actions have consequences in the wider world, in this case Eva Smith or Daisy Renton’s life. The family drove Eva Smith to suicide, supposedly.
The society in these days is no different from when it was set (1912). Our community is still selfish and egotistic. This is very much Mr Birling’s type of character. The inspector is showing, Mr Birling in this case, that he needs to look beyond himself and his own needs.
The effect the inspector has on the characters varies enormously. I will start with Sheila. She feels very guilty when she realises what she has done and about her involvement with Eva Smith’s death. She is really sorry, for her involvement with Eva Smith and is quite happy to admit that. Toward the end of the she has had enough, for her mother being dishonest with the inspector, and realises during the process that her mother has had something to do with the suicide and is not so innocent as she looked after all. She knows that if her mother doesn’t tell the truth first time the inspector will get it out of her before long. Yet again, she can be quite stubborn, unlike the Sheila we knew in act 1. She was the first person to understand the inspector’s lessons. She became accustomed to the way he worked faster than anyone else. So she was warning everyone not to tell lies, or not the truth, because he would get it out of them, as Sheila says, “He’s giving us the rope, so we’ll hang ourselves”. And she was quite right, he was doing exactly that.
Eric is quite honest when it comes to the inspector’s questioning; he admits to making Eva pregnant and admits to stealing £50 from his dad’s work. Overall Eric is very honest and is rather open about this situation. I believe that Sheila and Eric have seen the error of their ways and are the ones most willing to change. They have both apologised and, personally I think, they have seen the light.
Gerald is the wise guy towards the end of the play, he realises that not one of them saw the same photograph of Eva Smith, and points out, “There were probably four or five different girls”. He is suggesting that they all saw different photographs of what they believed to be the same girl. Everyone noticed in the end that they’d been had! Mr Birling phoned the Brumley Police Station and found out that there was no Inspector Goole on the force at the present time. If no one else is, Gerald is the man with the brains!
Mr. Birling likes to be in charge, he likes to have the position of authority, but since the inspector has knocked on the door, walked in and started asking questions, he has lost that authoritative role, and the inspector has gained it. An example of this behaviour is when Mr. Birling says, “You’re new aren’t you?” and “I was alderman for years…Lord Mayor…I’m still on the bench…I though I’d never seen you before”. He is saying this to make the Inspector feel inferior, this doesn’t work. Arthur does not like this and feels inferior for once; this makes him very impatient with the Mr. Goole.
I cannot notice many changes with Mrs. Birling since the Inspector stepped in the door. But the strange thing is she does not react in any way, to the supposed photo of Eva Smith. She tries to build up a brick wall, if you like, trying to prevent herself from getting involved in all the catastrophic business of a suicide and drinking disinfectant. In my opinion, a wise choice, although unadvisable as Sheila was trying her utmost to get across to her mother, if she carries on building up a brick wall, she is making it worse for herself and for other people; Sheila says that the inspector will get it out of her in the end so she might as well tell the truth. I think one lesson she might’ve learned, was to be honest first off. It usually helps the situation.
How the Inspector is portrayed on the stage is very important. The things we need to consider are how the Inspector is going to be interpreted in the performance or various types of performances, and the character requirements for each interpretation of the inspector ~ e.g. realistic, godly or hoaxer.
The first interpretation is that the inspector is realistic and is a genuine, down to earth kind of guy or secondly, a hoaxer having a laugh or thirdly, a mysterious figure, either an hallucination, a messenger sent down to earth to show them the error of their ways or just a symbol.
The way the Inspector is interpreted affects everything else, e.g. if the Inspector were to be portrayed realistically he would need to look like anybody else presentable, only with authority. He might be, say, a Yorkshire policeman. If the inspector were to be presented as a hoaxer he would need to look like realistic but has a very specific way of talking, he would need to be persuasive and slightly suspicious looking and controlling. If the director decides to have the Inspector as a kind of Godly figure he would need to be in control yet allowing the family to make their own decisions to some extent. He must take the lead in the conversation and this is what he does in the play. If the Godly figure was the type of character the director wanted to use smoke machines would be advisable, stunning, bright and bold yellow/orange lights; they must also be sharp in contrast to before the Inspector walks in. In all of these interpretations I think the Inspector should be standing while the Birling family are sitting down at the dining room table, because height alters importance and the most critical thing required of the inspector is authority.
The characterisation of the inspector is very important and is decided upon by how he speaks and what he looks like. The director ~ actor agreement must be made to agree on how the actor would speak. They would have to speak in a certain way, e.g. he might speak in a melancholy tone (because of the supposed suicide – if he were a hoaxer this would work well); he might use emotive language to try and get them to feel sorry for Eva Smith, therefore make them confess. What type of person should be portrayed? Should he speak morals or be dangerous?
The actor would have to decide how quickly or how slowly he was comfortable speaking. A hoaxer would speak very fast, not allowing the family to think about what he has said. The physique and facial expressions etc. of an actor are essential in choosing the right person for the job. Of course an Inspector would have to be smartly dressed to put across a sense of authority, he would require a closely shaven face or neat beard, (not scruffy and all over the place). He would need to appear very gentlemanly to gain further power and charge of the situation; also it is necessary to have a costume for that would suit the interpretation choice.
To conclude, the play An Inspector Calls seems to be a moral, telling the audience through Inspector Goole that there is more to life than just thinking about ourselves. Also it is portraying that our actions and what we say not only have an impact on us, but on the wider world. This is an important lesson that the whole community needs to learn, because we as a nation are as, if not more, selfish and ignorant as the times when this play was set, in 1912. This play ought to have made a difference, but at the state of current affairs at the present day it does not appear to have changed anything.