During the next scene it becomes apparent that Eric is the father, he knows it straight away saying "You know don't you". It comes clear that Eric had slept with Eva after a "drunken night" and she had told him she was pregnant. Eric had been stealing money form Mr. Birling's office and had given it to her "until she had refused it". Then Eric finds out that Eva had killed herself and their child at the same time, at this point Eric reaches an all time low in the play. It is also around this point in the play that a lot is discovered about Mr. Burling, it is not up until here that his greed and lust for money is fully shown, as he not only threatens to throw his own son out of his home for stealing from him, he even threatens that he will be informing the police and having Eric arrested for his crimes.
J B Priestly has many ways of creating tension and suspense, one is by using the inspector to ask several short questions, this means an abrupt rickety feel to the play and is used to get the full story out of every one. He does this by mentioning little things, therefore the characters come clean and the story starts to grow. This builds a lot of tensions because it's hard to tell what will happen next, and what the other characters have to do with Eva Smith.
At one point Gerald asks, "I'd be glad if you would let me go", the Inspector agrees for him to go for a walk. This gives off a lot of tension, for a start as too why the Inspector would let him go and also if Gerald was holding back more and needed to go before it was pulled out of him. Next the Inspector shows the photograph to Mrs. Birling, it becomes apparent that Eva Smith had gone to Mrs. Birling who was head of the "Brumley Women's Charity Organization". Eva had gone there under the name of Mrs. Birling, which angered the real Mrs. Birling, Eva Smith had wanted help. She told Mrs. Birling how her husband had deserted her and the audience eventually finds out how she was also pregnant. Immediately the audience think the baby must be Gerald's, but this is crushed with the Inspector "(cutting in sharply) No. No. Nothing to do with him", this leaves the audience wondering who's it could be and also by Eric Mr. Birlings son, running out during the conversation it builds a lot of tension and suspense around him.
Another way in which tension and suspense is created is through the relationships between characters. A keen example of this is the atmosphere generated between Sheila and Gerald, during the play Sheila finds that Gerald (her fiancé) has been cheating on her with non other than Eva Smith. This obviously creates a feeling of tension between the two characters for the rest of the play, even at the end of the play where Gerald tries to get Sheila to marry him again, however she is not sure and so there is another suspense moment created as she makes up her mind.
There is also tension between Eric and Mr. Burling after the revelation that he has been stealing from his father, as explained earlier in this essay, Eric also has an issue with his mother as she turned down Eva when she asked for help from his mothers charity too help raise her (and his) baby. Thirdly Eric has got an atmosphere with Sheila as she told their parents and the inspector about Eric’s’ drinking problem/habit, which leads on to an atmosphere between him and all in the house apart from Gerald and the inspector, who did not seem shocked or even surprised by the news in any way, shape or form.
This leads me on to my next point of tension and suspense in the play, the inspector himself, a.k.a; Inspector Ghoul. The inspector is the main cause of tension and suspense in the play, as not only is he shrouded in it himself (Who is he? Where is he from? How can he make everyone confess? Why does he never get angry? Etc…) but he also is the main creator of these two aspects in the way that he slowly gets the whole play revealed to him via his questions and general manner. The inspector is quite a quiet character in the play, seemingly not needing the aid of lots of words to help him get what he wants from the other characters. The ending of the play raises a lot of questions about the inspector, if he wasn’t the real inspector then who was he? And looking at it in some ways could raise the question what was he? What I mean to say is how could this ‘inspector Ghoul’ have known about the death of Eva before it even happened? And furthermore how did he know about each one of the families’ links to Eva? Well here is my conclusion; I believe that the Inspector is the realization of a theory in one of Priestly’s earlier books, the theory is that everyone is reborn when they die, over and over, but every time they live they meet one ‘special’ person that will give them the chance too move on, and in this case it was the Birling families ‘special person’, all they had to do was show repent and sorrow for what they had done, but Mr. and Mrs. Birling were just too proud to do that, and so after the ‘inspector’ left a real inspector called instead, informing them of the death of Eva Smith and that an inspector was being sent to talk to them, this is how the play ends.
