The inspector’s omniscience is used frequently in this theme of timing. He questions each person in order of who started this breakdown of Eva Smith and who finished her off. When Gerald asks, “Any particular reason why I shouldn’t see this girl’s photograph, Inspector?” The inspector just responds by saying, “It’s the way I like to go to work… Otherwise, there’s a muddle,” but further on in the play we find that this is not the whole truth. We find that time and time again in the play, the inspector tries to relate to the characters and the audience; by admitting he makes mistakes like every other human being. In the production the inspector was frequently looking at his watch as if he knew that the crucial last phone call was near. He also says in the text, “My trouble is – that I haven’t much time.” The inspector knowing everything about the Birlings is one of the most crucial elements of the play not just as a literary text but actual drama. It is this fact that Priestley uses to separate the Birling family. As the characters start to become aware of this fact so do the audience, it gives a sense of insecurity knowing that this stranger knows almost everything about you. When Gerald tries to hide his affair with Eva Smith, Sheila says, “Why-you fool-he knows… I hate to think how much he knows that we don’t know.” In this way the inspector breaks into the hopes and thoughts of the Birlings. This is shown quite literarily in the production, because when the inspector enters the house of the Birlings is flung open and the inspector himself pushes a staircase against the house. The inspector’s omniscience is used to both scare and reassure the audience. It scares them because an outsider knows their faults but reassures them as they are told that they can change the future.
This brings me to the third way that Priestley uses the inspector to predict the future. The inspector highlights everything that has gone on in the play by making his message absolutely clear in his speech, “We are members of one body… if men do not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.” As we are watching the play after two world wars we have the benefit of knowing who was actually right. In this way the inspector is used to make the socialist point of view seem like the right view and Birlings talk of the Titanic being ‘unsinkable’ and war being ‘impossible’ makes the capitalist idea seem completely wrong. But in the production the inspector’s power to predict the future is undermined by the fact that he is wearing nineteen-forties costume and at the beginning of the play he is holding an orange which was not readily available to the British public in nineteen-twelve. So the question that the inspector might be a time traveller arises. A shroud of mystery covers the inspector and this is how Priestley uses him to make the audience think.
The inspector is not just used by Priestley as an inspector in a traditional ‘whodunnit’ mystery, where the inspector has to identify one specific criminal. Priestley uses the inspector to connect each character with the suicide of Eva Smith. Each character in the play represents a part of society. Sheila and Eric represent those who could change the future. Gerald represents those who are given a chance to change but will not. Mr and Mrs Birling represent the people who are fanatically capitalist. Each character relates in some way or another to the emotions of some person sat in the audience. So In this way as the inspector casts his eyes over the other characters in the play, he also casts his eyes over the audience.
At the time this play is set in there were strikes happening regularly all over the country. The Labour Party came into existence and there were a few people with socialist ideas, like, “these Bernard Shaws and H.G.Wellses,” who tried to change the way that the working class was treated. However they were not allowed to speak freely by the, “ hard-headed practical business men,” in Britain at that time. I think that the way Priestley made the inspector be heard by the capitalist Birlings is magnificent. The inspector was the first person that actually managed to make at least some of society see sense. The inspector never forgives or punishes, he lets the characters do this themselves.
The production and just reading the text are two different experiences. Although in the text dashes and dramatic pauses are used to display the emotions shown, when you see the play in action the dots, dashes, punctuation and question marks all come to life. There were some dramatic differences between the text and the play. In the text the inspector is never told to shout any of his lines, even when he says, “Don’t stammer and yammer at me again, man. I’m losing all patience with you people.” But in the play he was frequently shouting which took away from his, “impression of massiveness,” it looked like the inspector was losing control, which I believe Priestley never intended to be the case. When the inspector said ‘stop’ in the production it was all powerful as he stopped everything amid all the chaos of the house collapsing and the Birlings’ squabbling as if he was supernatural. He brought about twenty people onto the stage, some dressed as paupers, some soldiers, some nurses and so forth to represent those who died in the world wars. I think this used the inspector to represent as a supernatural force. This was a great improvement and I believed it added to the way Priestley originally used the inspector.
After having analysed the play as a text and production I can see many ways in which Priestley used the inspector to convey his message of social responsibility. It is the inspector who moves the play forwards and creates tension between the characters and the audience. The inspector presents Priestley’s idea that, “We don’t live alone… We are responsible for each other.” It is the inspector who makes the audience think and invites them to participate throughout the play. He behaves not like an inspector but a father confessor, encouraging each character to acknowledge their guilt for Eva’s suicide. I think that the inspector represented Priestley himself and the way Priestley used the inspector in the play is the way he would have reacted during the play himself. Although it is clear that Priestley didn’t want the audience to promote a single interpretation of the inspector, because this would’ve broken the unsettled tension about who the inspector really is. Priestley concentrated on using the inspector to break through into the minds of the audience. It doesn’t really matter if the audience knows exactly who the inspector was as long as they get the fact the Priestley used the inspector to convey the socialist message of social responsibility.
