How Does Priestley Present Inspector Goole?
Inspector Calls is set in 1912, but is written in 1945. This is used for, and creates dramatic effect and irony through out the play.
The plot of the play is about a police inspector who interrupts an elegant engagement dinner party to question a family and their guest about an unusual suicide of a young working-class girl called Eva Smith. The Birlings’ are a very stereotypical upper-middle class family, with both the father and mother having very capitolist opinions on society, aswell as their daughter’s fiance; Gerald. So do their son and daughter, Eric and Sheila. But as the plot thickens, Eric and Sheila’s socialist views come to light. The inspector speaks to them one at a time and shows them a photograph of a girl or of Eva. He gets them to confess what they did, and he convinces them that they all helped to kill her. It turns out that Inspector Goole wasn’t a real police inspector, he was more of a political and moral inspector. He changed the way the family recognised one another and brought the truth out, even if some characters confessions had nothing to do with Eva Smith. Priestley uses the play as an example of what can happen if we are ignorant to the feelings of others.Inspector Goole's name is an axiomatic pun on 'ghoul', a spirit or a ghost. The name makes him sound ghostly and enigmatic.