Throughout the play the audience have this constant reminder of Mr Birling saying, “A man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own...” This later causes dramatic irony, as his attitude to life, affects people like Eva Smith. This is constant as Priestley wants us to realise the key aspect of it at the end of the play. Priestley does this through the inspector he says “One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smith still left with us…We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other”, this is case as it is the reason why Eva Smith died, because we do have to have responsibility for one another. This proves Mr Birling wrong, and it makes the audience (if they are first class) think. This is the sentence the inspector uses in apart of his speech before leaving the Birling house; this also causes a lot of moral thinking for the audience which has huge impact on their thoughts of the play as the audience now know what is right and what is wrong.
In the play there is the structure that Priestley makes for the Inspector in the order he interviews the Birling Family. He interviews Mr Birling, then Sheila, after that he interviews Gerald and then Mrs Birling then Eric. The inspector interviews them all in this order because it’s the order they all met Eva Smith. The exceptions are Mrs Birling and Eric. The reason for this is because if Mrs Birling knew Eric had an affair and that it was her grandchild Eva Smith was carrying, she wouldn’t have said the truth about blaming the father. When Mrs Birling finds out about Eric, she realises that she had been contradicting herself the whole time. This causes dramatic irony as in the end she condemned her own son. Every ones views changes about Eric after this because over all they’ve found out that he’s a drunk, he stole company money (£50) from his fathers and he got Eva Smith pregnant.
The whole story of Eva coming to Mrs Birling’s charity leads to breaking the bond Eric and Mrs Birling have, as everything she did to Eva is cruel and prejudice. When Mrs Birling sends Eva away, this causes her to commit suicide (as she gives up after everything she’s been through), and therefore killing the baby to. We know that the bond between Eric and Mrs Birling is broken for sure when Eric says “you killed them both- damn you, damn you”.
In the play the Inspector walks in just after Mr Birling says “a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own – and” This causes Sheila to think ‘why at that moment’ we know this because when they are discussing the fact that the Inspector isn’t a inspector after all Sheila says “(sharply attentive) Is that when the Inspector came, just after father had said that?”. This causes dramatic irony as ‘a man has to mind his own business’ is the moral of the play Priestley gives to the audience.
The moral of act 3 is mostly based on guilt and the family realising who the family all really are. The growing feeling effect of the evening’s events on the Birling family as a whole: they start to feel so caught up and involved, that they start arguing amongst themselves, and feel bitter “You’re the one I blame for this. They all blame each other responsible for what has happened.
For Sheila it doesn’t matter whether the inspector is real or not because what’s important to her is that she now knows the truth about herself and everyone. But Mr and Mrs Birling want to forget everything and pretend nothing had happened. It seems to make a big difference because the confession to a real policeman would have meant a public scandal, but in another way when Mr Birling finds out that the inspector wasn’t a real one, Gerald, Mrs Birling and Mr Birling forget about everything and rejoice about it, we know this when Mr Birling says “But the whole things different now.” As for Sheila and Eric, they learnt from their mistakes, whether the inspector was real or not. Eric and Sheila become more mature in the fact that they realise about everything they’ve done.
Mr and Mrs Birling and Gerald become self-confident again and that’s why the second phone call takes place, to undermine that: the play write wants to prove them wrong! The second call they receive shows the audience clearly that the Inspector was a ghost or a simple person to make them think about there actions, or to tell them in advance what was coming their way. We know this as after Birling is on the phone he says “A police inspector is on his way here- to ask some questions” This makes the audience and the characters think about everything and everyone all over again, as the death of the girl in the end actually happened.
This play had much more affect in the time it was written (1940’s), as it still had very strong prejudice people. There is more affect, as it is proving the first class wrong (which would be the type of people going to see plays in those days as it was very expensive). In our time the audience would maybe have a few lower classes to upper class, so you would get a wider view on the play.
After considering the variety of ways in which he makes the play dramatic, it may be seen that Priestly uses his to emphasise his message mostly through the Inspector and the way he has set the play overall.
