Mr Birling, who is questioned by the Inspector first is described by Priestly as heavy looking, rather portentous in his middle fifties with fairly easy manners and rather provincial in his speech. Birling is fairly successful in his line of work and is always striving to become better. He is self-important and slightly pompous. He is selfish and overly concerned by what other people will think of him. This is portrayed when he finds out that Eric stole from his business and he says “I’ve got to cover this up as soon as I can”. He could even be described as old fashioned. Examples of this self-importance can be found a lot in the text. For example, on page 5 of the text, Mr Birling rambles on about nonsense like " The unsinkable Titanic", "very little chance of a World War" and of "Russia being technically and socially behind." This illustrates that his views are ridiculous and undermines the importance of what he is saying. Mr. Birling is a industrialist who has climbed the ranks of society in his late fifties, seen as nouveau riche. He shows that he is more intrested in money when he mentions Sheilas engagement bringing “Crofts and Birlings: together “for lower costs and higher prices”. Mr Birling’s reaction to the accusations was that he showed very little guilt for Eva’s death. At the end of the play he shows some responsibility as he says “look inspector I’d give thousands yes thousands”. But after hearing that the Inspector is not real he then goes back to his original type of behaviour and believs it was not his fault that the girl died. He also asserts that he knew that the Inspector was a fake all along and goes back to saying that they were all innocent. He does this when he says “This makes a difference, y’know. In fact, it makes all the difference.” When he fids out the inspectorwas not a true inspector he is astounded at first but then goes on when Mr Birling says that “ as long as we behave ourselves, don’t get into the police court or start a scandal” he is displaying dramatic irony as we then go on to find that he sacked Eva Smith from her job for protesting against the low wages and campaigning for higher ones.
Sheila Birling is the daughter of the Birling family. She is in her early twenties and has just become engaged to Gerald Croft. Sheila like her father uses dramatic irony when she says that she’ll “never let it out of my sight” when talking about the ring. Sheila is the most sensible out of the family and is quite perceptive. She works out before everyone else that you can’t hide anything from the inspector and tries to stop her parents from making a fool of them selves but they don’t listen to her, this is shown when she says to them “ he’s giving us the rope – so that we’ll hang ourselves”. After finding out about Eva’s death she shows guilt and responsibility for her actions and is then determined to adjust her way of life. She shows this when she says “ I felt rotten about it at the time and now I feel a lot worse.” Sheila was responsible for the sacking of Eva Smith from her job in Milwards; she had Eva sacked as she thought Eva had mocked her. Sheila symbolises that in the society of the time, people from each class stuck together and worked together. She is also symbolic of a younger generation that may learn from its mistakes. By the end of the play Priestly shows that the younger generation are capable of learning from their mistakes and of changing when Sheila says to Gerald “ You and I aren’t the same people who sat down to dinner here”. Sheila becomes more mature as the plays progresses and by the end she judges her parents actions.
Another character that outlines Priestly’s view of society is Eric Birling, who is Mr. and Mrs. Birling's son. Eric is very misunderstood by his parents and they don’t know his habits. He is portrayed as being horrified by his parents inability to admit their part in Eva’s death, and he actually tells them “I’m ashamed of you”. Mrs Birling condemns him before she knows who is responsible for Eva’s pregnancy. His relationship with his farther is not very strong and he is seen as a shy and accord character. His first appearance states ‘Eric suddenly guffaws’ – he is then nervous and cannot explain why he laughed. Eric is a heavy drinker and is in his early twenties. He forced himself on to Daisy Renton (which is the name Eva Smith is then know by), whilst under the influence of alcohol, resulting in her pregnancy. Eric is seen as immature and surrounded by a bubble protecting him from the real world, much like his sister. He is described by Priestly as much less at ease than his sister, half shy and also half assertive. Eric continued to see Eva for some time before she told him that she thought that she was pregnant. She blatantly refused to take any money from Eric, as she knew that it was stolen from his father's business and she also refused to do what was at that time considered to be the decent thing and marry Eric because she knew that he did not love her. Eric, although immoral and irresponsible in his actions, did offer to support her and was even prepared to go and steal from his own father's business in order to do so. It was considered very wrong to steal from anyone, let alone your own family in this era and any actions resembling this at all, even for a perfectly acceptable reason was extremely frowned upon. Eric also continued to feel guilty after learning that there was no Eva/Daisy, just as his sister did. All of this shows that Eric, despite all of his irresponsible actions, did try to do what was morally right afterwards and therefore should not have the most blame put on his conscience.
Inspector Goole is the mysterious inspector whom the family assume to be from the police, sent to the Birling house to investigate the death of Eva Smith. His arrival at the Birling residence is a very significant event, both literally and metaphorically. He is very intimidating and tries to make everyone feel guilty. He knocks at the door; this metaphor signifies a change in the life of the Birling family and a change for capitalists everywhere in England. The timing of the Inspectors call also holds significance as it is during the middle of another pompous speech by Birling. This is a metaphor for the immediate interruption by socialism against capitalism. It also highlights one of the inspector's key messages that the Birlings must change, and fast. Although the Inspector is polite to the Birlings, he is not intimidated by them – he moves his chair slightly from in front of the desk when invited to sit down and has a habit of looking hard at the person he is addressing before speaking. He challenges what the Birlings stand for, not just by his questioning in his role as a policeman but socially as well, for example, he says to Sheila Birling ‘” In fact, I’ve thought that it would do us all a bit of good if sometimes we tired to put ourselves in the place of these young women counting their pennies in their dingy little back bedrooms”. People in the Birlings place in society at the time would have expected the working class to treat them with exceptional civility as they believed themselves superior in every way, the inspector is not impressed and forces them to answer him by concentrating on one person at a time. The inspector's abrupt arrival to the Birling household is used by Priestly to highlight the rapid change, as ideas of capitalism began to be challenged by the new ideas of change. The inspector has a very specific method of questioning. Priestly directs that the inspector gives an impression of solidarity and purposefulness.
Priestly shows his view that everyone should have a responsibility in society by involving the entire Birling family in one way or another in Eva’s death. An excellent example of this dramatic effect is when the inspector says ‘We are all members of one body. We are responsible for each other.’ Eva’s name represents and symbolises that the mother of humanity is important, she could be any and every woman. Inspector Goole reinforces this when he says ‘One Eva Smith has gone but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva smiths and John Smiths still left with us…’There is a great effect of never meeting Eva, which results in us only seeing her through the eyes of the other characters. This means that we are unable to form our own judgements about her, she emerges as a more principled character than the others. We never actually find out who Inspector Goole is. It may be that Priestly intended him to represent peoples own morals and consciences.
After reading this play it reminded me that I need to take my own part in responsibility for my actions and for helping others. It showed me that we cannot live our lives selfishly wrapped up in our own thoughts without considering the impact of our actions on those around us. We have a collective responsibility for ensuring that those who are weak or disadvantaged in some way are not left out and that they are cared for.
The world we live in today has increasing crime and death reported in the news on a daily basis. This shows that many people in our society do not care about other peoples’ beliefs, cultures, feelings and way of life. Difference is not a bad thing and we should respect others and try to understand their viewpoints.
