This makes it interesting for the audience because they would want to see what Gerald has done wrong because he comes across as a nice young man at the beginning, the same for Mrs Birling; we would expect her to have such a cold heart. Also it would be a good reflection on the way the audience acts and behave in their normal life. It would also be interesting because there were lots of events happening between 1912 when the play was set and 1946 when the audience would be watching the play. There was hunger and unemployment. There were national strikes, as people could no longer live as they were being treated. They suffered from 2 world wars. England seemed a land of plenty but only because people ha such few benefits. The great ship “The Titanic” sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The audience would have known this but Mr Birling happily talks about the ship as being great, so we have dramatic irony.
Another main character in the play is Eva Smith; the whole story of inspector calls is based around her. Although she is not physically in the play and hasn’t actually got a part in the play, she is properly the main character in the whole play. She commits suicide and the other characters are questioned by Inspector Goole about there playing in the part of her death.
Gerald and Mrs Birling both have strong connections with the late Eva Smith. Gerald was found out to have been having an affair with Eva while still being engaged to Sheila. “But she became your mistress” “yes I suppose it was inevitable”. He admitted to have been seeing Eva Smith after meeting her at a bar.
Mrs Birling however had been the last person to have been involved with Eva Smith before she actually committed suicide. Eva had been having intimate relations with Eric Birling, and had fallen pregnant with his child, much against her own will and his. It wasn’t meant to be anything serious, he forced her. And Eva went to see Mrs Birling at her charity and Mrs Birling actually refused to give Eva any help. “I used my influence to have her refused” Mrs Birling wasn’t entirely satisfied with Eva’s claim and therefore she didn’t get any help from the charity.
Both Mrs Birling and Gerald both have different reactions to the Inspectors arrival. Mrs Birling isn’t actually in the room when the inspector arrives and therefore she gets introduced later in the play. However Gerald is in the room and he doesn’t say a great deal. Gerald acts very cool about the inspector arriving, although when the inspector refuses to show Gerald a photograph he starts showing annoyance with him. “(Showing annoyance) any particular reason why I shouldn’t see this girls photograph, Inspector”. Showing that he is starting to get very agitated and doesn’t understand the Inspectors reasons for not showing him.
This tells us that not only the lower classes have affairs that middle classes do to. They are involved with dodgy goings on and they aren’t all they are cracked up to be. They do a lot more things that they thought no one knew about. Like when Eric stole the money from his fathers business to help Eva Smith, we wouldn’t think middle classes would do this kind of thing but it proves they do. Also they seem to care a lot about their image and don’t want things coming out about them. “I must say Sybil that when this comes out at the inquest, it isn’t going to do us much good. The press might easily take it up” he cares more about whether the press will find out than how is family are coping with the investigation.
Mrs Birling however acts very pleasant about the Inspectors arrival, she pleasantly speaks and introduces herself, however she has felt that the Inspector has overstayed his welcome and tries to use her social status and who she is to make the Inspector go. “I’m Mrs Birling, y’know.” “I don’t think new can help you much”. She uses who she is and what she is to influence the Inspector and to make him leave their house. It shows she is very confident and doesn’t believe that a family like her could ever do anything like this. This reveals that Mrs Birling feels that she is quite important and has a high status which should make the inspector leave. The way she flounces in.
The Inspector treats all the characters including Mrs Birling and Gerald the same, he is very rude and does not have a usual approach to the questioning. When Inspector questions the others before Gerald he acts as if Gerald has nothing to do with the inquiry, until he mentions the name Daisy Renton, at this point is when the inspector starts to question Gerald’s involvement. When he first mentions Daisy Renton (formally Eva Smith) Gerald acts as if everybody knows whom he is talking about, until he realises Gerald is obviously trying to hide something and isn’t being honest “Where did you get the idea I did know her”. This is when the Inspector starts to get cold with Gerald; he assured him that he knew that he knew Daisy and that he just wanted to get on with the questioning. This builds tension because Gerald holds back the truth in the beginning, and the inspector starts to intimidate Gerald in order to get the truth out.
The audience may respond by wanting to know more, it comes as a shock that Gerald was having an affair and the audience will want to know more and whether the relationship between Gerald and Sheila will survive.
When it comes to Mrs Birling’s turn to be questioned, she believes she has nothing to hide and believes she done what any other person would have done. They both act very calm and respect each other, but when he really starts to question her, he becomes very overwhelming towards Mrs Birling “I think you did something terribly wrong – and your going to spend the rest of your life regretting it. I wish you could have been with me tonight in the infirmary. You’d have seen” He is trying to make Mrs Birling confess to her involvement and he tries doing this by making her feel guilty. But Mrs Birling was still strong and didn’t let this get to her, she replied by showing she wasn’t bothered by Eva Smiths death and believed it was no-one but the father of the child that the girl was expecting fault.
This tells us that it is not all lower classes that do things wrong and get involved with the police, middle classes do things wrong. They get involved in the wrong things and sometimes act like lower classes. They sleep around and steal.
The other characters are all treated in the same way as Mrs Birling and Gerald. Gerald is very rude and he acts quite nasty to them all. Shelia is very hysterical about the questioning, she gets very upset by the Inspector keep bringing up that Eva has died “Don’t please – I know, I know – and I cant stop thinking about it”. Mr Birling however gets very angry and distressed with the Inspectors rudeness, the Inspector also gives out orders which go against Mr Birlings wishes, in his own house. Eric says “ could I have a drink first” Mr Birling “NO” Inspector “yes”. He is clearly going against Mr Birlings wishes and is trying to intimidate him. When the Inspector is questioning Eric he acts nice and ok about everything, telling him he can have a drink against his fathers wishes, but when the inquiry starts getting underway his asks Eric lots of questions, Eric responds calmly and understandingly and answers all the questions the Inspectors asks.
Mrs Birling gets treated more unfairly than the others because the inspector is started to get more tired with the Birlings and them not facing up to the facts. He tries to show Mrs Birling that he knows all about what she has been doing, but she wont believe him. He questions her but she won’t face up to the fact that she played a part in the misery of Eva Smith. She believes what she did was just and that it was meant to happen. The inspector treats Mrs Birling unfairly and when she doesn’t answer a question properly he changes his tone and becomes quite nasty. Mrs Birling refuses to answer a question but the inspector says very rudely “You have no hope of not discussing it, Mrs Birling” he could have asked more nicely, Mrs Birling responds to this by standing up for herself and not letting the inspector intimidate her.
The inspector tries to control and manipulate the scene by acting as if he knows everything about what the other key characters have been up to. He uses different things to try and show the characters that he can and will use everything he knows to make them confess about everything to do with Eva Smith. He starts family feuds between the characters and uses this to control them and make them listen to him “ just a minute, Mr Birling. There’ll be plenty of time, when I’ve gone, for you all to adjust your family relationships. But now I must hear what your son has to tell me.” By doing this it shows that he wants to be the top person and he shows that in his position no one can be bigger and more powerful in the room than him.
The author makes the questioning exiting, tense and dramatic in an extremely clever and genuine way. He manages to do this by making the inspector such a rude and pompous person. The Birlings come across as being rude as well. The inspector raises their blood pressure and makes them seem very arrogant. Also the author manages to have only one person being questioned at once and when the Inspector has enough information from one person, the story manages to change and another person gets questioned. It all follows on from one another, from who knew her first, being Mr Birling to who last Mrs Birling and Eric. The author manages to keep the whole story a mystery throughout, the audience start to wonder what will happen next, and who will be involved in what way. “ Mother I begged you and begged you to stop – (inspector hold up a hand. We hear the front door. They wait, looking towards door. Eric enters, looking extremely pale and distresses…. Curtain falls quickly”. At every end of an act there is always a cliffhanger which adds to the tension and mystery. We never know who will be questioned or involved next, but when we find out at the end we see that the play all falls together like a jigsaw. Also the author has lots of dramatic irony, for instance the play in set in 1912 but played in 1945, the audience know of the Titanic sinking, but Mr Birling’s character doesn’t. He goes on about a ship that is so good and that it won’t sink, when everybody knows it does.
Another way the author uses dramatic irony is when Mrs Birling starts to natter on about how the father of Eva Smith’s child should be the one who should be blamed. “If the girls death is due to anybody, then its due to him”. She starts to condemn her own son and is really letting him have it, she believes that the young man had been the cause of the girls death, but what Mrs Birling doesn’t know is that Eric is the father of the child.
The author manages to build tension between Gerald and the Inspector by making Gerald character hold back on the information he is willing to give to the inspector. Also the inspector reveals the photo of Eva Smith o the characters one at a time. The inspector intimidates Gerald and Mrs Birling by getting them to think he knows an awful lot about their lives. The author manages to build dramatic tension in many ways.
The audience might be on the family’s side when the questioning has begun, because of the fact that the inspector is not acting normally and is very impolite “no hushing up, eh? Make an example of the young man, eh? Public confession of responsibility – um?” He is talking down to the Birling’s and Gerald as though he knows best. So the audience may feel that he is being unfair and out of order to them. The audience might get frustrated with the older Birlings, because they are very hypocritical; they avoid the truth at any given moment “I did nothing I was ashamed of, or that wont bear investigation. The audience and the Inspector know full well that both Mr Birling and Mrs Birling had something to do with the death of Eva Smith. At the same time the audience may feel very proud for Sheila, her character has truly developed throughout the story “You and I aren’t the same people who sat down to dinner her…”. Both Eric and Sheila face up to what they have done, Eric especially he confesses to being aggressive with Eva “I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty, and I threatened to make a row.” The audience may be happy and are engaged with the play and want to see what will happen.
At the same time the audience may be feeling as though they want the Birlings to get what’s coming to them, after all a girl who they all treated in a bad way is dead and they all played a role in the death. It may not have been physically but mentally they tore her down to the point where she didn’t even want to provide a life for her unborn child.
The audience may be feeling proud of Gerald as well, because although at the beginning her is holding back he soon starts to tell all and answers all the inspectors questions, despite Sheila being in the room. But at the same time they may be feeling hatred towards him for the same things, he had an affair with another girl while being engaged and his character changed dramatically in the play. At the beginning everything as jolly and sweet but soon turned nasty and bitter.
This questioning develops the moral message of the play by showing all the middle classes faults and weaknesses. It shows and tells us that it’s not just the lower class that have faults and mishaps happen to them, the middle class and upper class do to. The middle classes are very selfish and talk down on the poor, “As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money”. Also they care about their image more than what really happened. “I must say Sybil, that when this comes out at the inquest, it isn’t going to do us much good. The press might easily take it up” This makes the audience take a good hard look at the life of the Birlings and realise that not all middle class families are good. Also it proves that not only the poor commit adultery, the middle classes do it to. For example Gerald has Eva as his mistress until he wants to get rid of her, then he just casts her away as if she was a piece of rubbish.
The characters of Gerald Croft and Sybil Birling are similar in ways and different in others. Mrs Birling likes to flaunt who she is and uses it to her own advantage, like when Eva Smith came to her charity for help “I used my influence to have it refused”. She is very cold hearted and didn’t take a second care about the girl because they got off on the wrong note. “First she called herself Mrs Birling – and naturally that was one of the things that prejudiced me against her case”. Whereas Gerald actually had some affection for her and made her happy for a time. He let her stay at his friend’s houses and gave her some TLC, which she needed. He genuinely cared about Eva. He was one of the only ones to be truthful “ all right I did for a time. Any man would have done”. He admitted to his wrong doing, unlike Mrs Birling who couldn’t admit to the fact she did something wrong. She believed it was all fine and dandy.
Gerald and Mrs Birling are similar in some ways including the fact that they are typical middle class people. They both come from well off families and enjoy the comforts of home. Also at the beginning of both of their interrogation they both hold back, they don’t want the inspector to reveal them and believe that what they have done has no effect on anything.
The audience learns a great deal about Gerald Croft. He’s character changes a lot during the play, at the beginning we get introduced to a nice genuine young chap, but throughout the play we get to see a different side to him a side that stays locked up until the inspector starts to bring up things from the past. Gerald gets very angry and takes all his anger out on poor Sheila. He turns very bitter and nasty. The audience also learns that Gerald isn’t your typical middle class man. He commits adultery while with Sheila and this shocks them.
Mrs Birling doesn’t change a great deal throughout the play, which makes her interesting. She keeps the same level headedness and the same manner throughout. At some points he becomes distressed with what’s going on but soon revives herself. She keeps the same tone over her interrogation although being asked more questions in a more angry tone by the inspector. She manages not to let the inspector get the better of her. The audience learns that Mrs Birling may be the head of a charity, which helps lower classes, but this doesn’t make her a better person. She refuses Eva simply because she was prejudiced at the beginning.
The thing that makes these two characters so intresting to watch is the fact that they seem to bring a lot to the story line. Mrs Birling is the last of them to be involved with Eva, but she is almost one of the ones who were most horrible to her. Some would say she was the cause of Eva deaths, but others would say it was bound to happen. Whereas Gerald was the only one who showed her compassion and love. He cared about her and gave her food and a place to stay, but soon over time he to kicked her out in the cold. His actions bring to the play the whole Sheila and Gerald ‘will they wont they’ dilemma. The audience want to know what will happen with both of them, will they still be engaged or will the break?
I think Priestly’s moral message to the audience is that it doesn’t matter how lower class a person is, they have a heart and feelings unlike anybody else, and you should think of this before you treat them in any way different to yourself. Also the moral message is that not only the lower class behave in a certain way, the middle class do to, middle class people behave in the same manor that the lower class people do. For example, Alderman Meggarty. The middle class had poor behaviour which shows through this man, he is a womaniser and is meant to be a respected person of the town but he soon turns out to be the opposite.
