Mr. Birling's outlook on life is that ”That a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own.” He also believes that socialist ideas that stress the importance of the community are "nonsense."
He claims the party "is one of the happiest nights of my life." He is dedicated to his business and it is implied that he enjoys the engagement of his daughter and Gerald Croft because it allows for the possibility of Crofts Limited and Birling Company working together in the future. He is always changing the conversation to his business.
Priestly shows that Mr. Birling is a bully when Eric questions him about his views on the death of Eva.”Unless you brighten your ideas, you'll never be in a position to let anybody stay or let anybody go” He bullies Eric because he does not think the same way as he does about things. He also contributed to the death of Eva Smith, as he fired her from her job, and caused her to lose everything, which shows he does not care about other peoples feelings.
He is also the sort of person who likes to take control, for example when the Inspector first comes he is the first to greet him and tries to make him feel welcome but the Inspector doesn't want Mr. Birling's greeting and turns it away “No thank you I'm on duty.” And tries (and fails) to impress the Inspector with his standing and his influential friends.
So the overall impression that J.B Priestly has created of Mr. Birling is that he is a very pompous self important person who is very short sighted and always thinks he is right. He also sucks up to the inspector a lot. For example after the inspector has finished questioning him, he then starts to offer him lots of alcohol and starts apologizing for his behavior. He doesn't even care that his children and wife are going to be questioned next and could go to prison, this gives the audience the impression of him being very selfish.
The audiences first impressions of Mrs. Birling are that she comes across worse then her husband and she also doesn't admit when she is wrong much like Mr. Birling. She is also very selfish as she shows no remorse for the girl who died, and does not want to help anyone unless it is for the benefit of herself. She is also very patronising towards her children, as she still sees them as “children”. So in the audiences view she is a horrible person. Mrs. Birling's view on life is much like her husbands, that everyone should look after themselves.
She is a snob, she is very aware of the differences between social classes. She is irritated when Mr Birling praises the cook in front of Gerald and later is very dismissive of Eva, saying "Girls of that class." She tries to deny things that she doesn't want to believe: Eric's drinking, Gerald's affair with Eva etc. Although towards the end of the play she comes to terms with all this.
J.B Priestly wants the audience to hate Mr and Mrs. Birling and find them repulsive so conclusively find their views and ideas repulsive as well, so the audience gets to dislike them and look for a character they can identify with and share the same views with. So the audience start to agree with the views of the Inspector. J.B Priestly wants the audience to feel emotions towards his point of view but you still can't identify with him.
Eric is the child of the family, described as "not quite at ease, half-shy, half-assertive". He does not have a very good relationship with his father. He begins the play happy, enjoying the family celebration although a bit drunk, Gerald says "I have gathered that he does drink pretty hard." . At the end of the play he decides to give up drinking as he thinks it has led to the death of Eva Smith. As well as Sheila, Eric is also sympathetic towards Eva Smith and said that he is "ashamed" of his parents, especially his mother. So when he hears how his father sacked Eva Smith, he supports the worker's cause, like Sheila. "Why shouldn't they try for higher wages?" he says.
The Inspector definately made his presence felt when he first comes into the house of Mr and Mrs. Birling, he changes the atmosphere completely from them being happy and celebrating the engagement, to the characters and audience feeling very uncomfortable. He makes the the characters feel uneasy by interrogating them one by one. He is a very emotionally detached person as he does not show any feelings towards the other characters.
Goole is a old fashioned word for a ghost so by this The Inspectors name suggests that he has a very ghostly personality and character. The Inspector plays two dramatic roles in the play, He is J.B Priestley's ventriloquist (he is his spokes person) and he uses him to convey the message of the play. He also makes all the characters bring out their consciences as at the beginning of the story none of the characters seem to have one. He often tells the characters "to settle things afterwards" in order to make sure that the conversation is going in the direction he wants.
The Inspectors outlook on life is very different to that of Mr and Mrs. Birling, he believes that “We are all members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will come soon when, if men will not learn that lesson, they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.” He is saying that if everyone acts like the Birling's then another war will start.
Suggestions of sexual scandal are made before we hear the details, as with Gerald, Sheila has doubts of where he was last summer, even though she seems very talkative at the opening, we know that she has had suspicions about Gerald when she mentions "last summer, when you never came near me." The mention of this affects the audience's enjoyment of the play because they know that something is going on. As soon as Eva comes into the picture Sheila and the audience start getting even more suspicious.
He did have some genuine feeling for Daisy Renton, however: he is very moved when he hears of her death. He tells Inspector Goole that he arranged for her to live in his friend's flat "because I was sorry for her"; she became his mistress because "She was young and pretty and warm-hearted - and intensely grateful." When Sheila finds out about this her and Gerald agree to have a break from their relationship.
Sheila is "a very pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited" with her engagement to Gerald, the audiences first impressions of Sheila are that she is shellfish and spoilt. Although after she hears the Inspectors views on the girl that died, she changes and realises what she was like. After that she is a much nicer person and you feel you can connect with her, she leans from her mistakes. She becomes the character who is most sympathetic to Eva, showing remorse and guilt on hearing that she was a part in her suicide she feels "really responsible." As the play progresses, Sheila becomes more rebellious towards her parents. She becomes aware of the situation they are facing and, towards the end, promises to change. So therefore you want to identify with her unlike with the Inspector where you can't.
The form that the play is written in is Whodunit. The whodunit was most popular during the Golden Age of detective fiction, during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, when it was the more popular genre of crime writing. This genre is still very popular today with such dramas as Agatha Christie's Poirot, Colombo etc. The main convention of the whodunit genre is, the reader is provided with clues from which the identity of the murderer may be found before the solution is revealed in the final pages of the book. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric amateur or semi-professional detective.
J.B Priestly sticks very rigidly to the convection of the Whodunit genre, for example the way the Inspector interrogates and letting them see the photograph one at a time. The Inspector works very systematically; he likes to deal with "one person and one line of inquiry at a time." His method is to confront a suspect with a piece of information and then make them talk - or, as Sheila puts it, "he's giving us the rope - so that we'll hang ourselves."
There is a lot of tension as each member of the family is found to have played a part in Eva's death. New pieces of information the Inspector squeezes out of the characters contribute to the construction of the story. The audience is interested in how each character reacts to their part of her suicide. The way the Inspector questions the characters keeps the audience in suspense wondering who had the biggest part in Eva's suicide.
Now and then J.B Priestly slips in clues indicating that another member of the Birling family was also involved with Eva Smith, this makes the audience curious and eager to find out about what actually happened between Eva Smith and the next character to be investigated because they all seem to be entangled in it somehow. For example Mrs. Birling makes her husband remember that he is involved in the tragedy as well “Please remember that before you start accusing me of anything again that it wasn't I who had turned her out of employment-which probably began it all.” Just as one scene is about to finish J.B Priestly slips in the involvement of another character in Eva's suicide, this gives even more tension.
The ending leaves the audience on a cliff-hanger. Near the end the Birling's thought they were off the hook, when they realise that the Inspector wasn't real and that no girl had died in the infirmary. This releases some of the tension - but the final telephone call, saying that a real inspector is on his way to ask them questions about the suicide of a young girl, this suddenly restores the tension very dramatically. It is an unexpected final twist.
