When the door bell rang Mr. Birling stops to listen and then just carries on what he was talking about. The doorbell rings at a really calm moment not a lot has happened so far in the play. Birling has given some dramatic speeches talking about war and how it will never happen. The doorbell goes and the inspector doesn’t come straight in it takes a bit for him to come in; Priestley is creating more tension here by slowing things down. Priestley describes the Inspector; he builds the Inspector up and makes him sound really tough and hard to crack.
‘The Inspector calls’ is a good book. What makes it good is that at the end of every scene it finishes with either an entrance or exit. At the end of act 1, the inspector enters and says ‘well’. This is a different way to end the act but it is really useful because it adds more tension. The following scene begins with a question or a cliff-hanger the inspector comes in and says ‘well’. The effect this has on the audience is that they are waiting to see what happens next. Gerald leaves and then comes back at the end of the act. This is unusual because it leaves the whole story on a cliff-hanger, He has done this to create tension and make the story longer and better.
Shelia’s words have been given extra power because she is getting anxious and wants to know what Gerald had to do with Eva Smith. The stage directions are good because that the door is slow to open and you don’t know who’s going to come through the door.
The end of act 2 also ends with an entrance, Eric enters. This is a good technique it always leaves the story on a cliff-hanger. We know and Shelia that Eric made Eva Smith pregnant and then run off. Mrs.Birling’s speech’s use a lot of dramatic irony she says that ‘this boy should be locked up’ she doesn’t know that Eric is the father but the audience and we know. Priestley creates tension by slamming doors offstage because the actors and the audience don’t know who it is. The 3 slams of the door create more tension and suspense because Eric enters and the audience know that Eric is the father of the baby. This tells us that the characters offstage are still very involved even though they are offstage. The Inspectors questioning keeps everyone in the story and never lets them out of the story. When Eric enters the words Priestley uses are very good because he says ‘Eric enters looking extremely pale and distressed’ these words are good because they show you what Eric looks like and is feeling.
The Inspectors final speech is aimed at the whole family because he is just telling them what they have all done but not using the same words ‘One Eva Smith has gone but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us’ The irony of the speech is that the whole time the inspector new that Eric was the culprit. The play doesn’t end here because all the other acts ended with an entrance, if he finished the story here he would have ended with an exit but Priestley wanted to end with an entrance. The role of the inspector was to go in and steer things up and get them to admit to what they had done.
Gerald had just come back he had found out that the inspector wasn’t a real inspector he was a fraud. Gerald re-entrance is an echo because Priestley wanted to repeat something tat had happened earlier to create more tension. This creates more tension but it allows the Birlings to return to their engagement party. Birlings last speech is full of dramatic irony because he saying that no girl has died from drinking disinfectant but we all know that a girl has died from drinking disinfectant ‘and there wasn’t the slightest bit of proof that this daisy Renton was really Eva Smith’. He needs to answer the phone because it is an officer telling him that an inspector is coming round to question the family about the death of Eva Smith. The stage directions for the ringing of the phone are very good, ‘a sharp ring of the telephone’. We can compare this to when the doorbell goes in the first act. ‘we hear the sharp ring of the doorbell’ Priestley chose the moment where everything was going back to normal this change the audience beliefs about what was going on. The play ends with another entrance of the second inspector.
Conclusion
I have argued that Priestley uses dramatic irony and entrances and exits to create tension. Priestley wanted the audience to know more then the actors on stage to create that bit more tension. Priestley’s Political message he wants to give is that we shouldn’t be judge on which class we are.
