Inspector Goole shows Mr. Birling that Eva Smith's suicide is the outcome of people not looking after each other in one big community. He does this by presenting to each member of the Birling family

An Inspector calls essay

The play “an inspector calls” was written by J.B.Priestly in 1945.

The play is set in 1912 two years before the first world war, it is about a family known as the Birlings who are a well respected middle class family of their time.

At the beginning of the play, the Birlings and Gerald croft are having a celebration in the Birlings household in the dining room. They are celebrating the engagement of Sheila Birling of Birling company and Gerald Croft of Crofts limited. Everyone at the Birling household is enjoying themselves but then the celebrations are interrupted by a phony police officer who went by the name of “Inspector Goole”. He went on to tell the other characters that a woman had committed suicide and to how they all are linked to her death. The inspector tries to make the characters feel responsible for her death by showing how they negatively affected her life.

Mr. Birling’s comments about society are ironic in the light of what happens next in the play because Birling gives Eric and Gerald a lecture about how a man should look after himself and his family “no one else, and forget about community, a man has to make his own way –had to look after himself-and his family too” “the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you’d think everybody has to look after everybody else”

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Inspector Goole shows Mr. Birling that Eva Smith’s suicide is the outcome of people not looking after each other in one big community. He does this by presenting to each member of the Birling family and Gerald Croft times when they came in contact with Eva Smith and acted negatively towards her for example when Mrs. Birling refused to help her when she most needed help, when she was pregnant with a child and not a penny to her name. Also when Mr. Birling fires her from her job for asking for a pay rise, “they wanted the rates raised so that they could average about twenty-five shillings a week. I refused of course” Once refusing to give the laborers a pay rise he fired the ring leaders who came up with the idea, one of them was Eva Smith. Mr. Birling thought she had to much to say so had to go. “Eva Smith was one of them. She’d had a lot to say-far too much-so she had to go.” The inspector shows Mr. Birling that this was the first step towards Eva Smith’s downfall but Mr. Birling doesn’t feel in anyway responsible for her suicide as he fired her almost 2 years ago. “It happened more than eighteen months ago-nearly two years ago”

Mr. Birling makes some comments which are ironic in the light of what happens next in society, remember that the play is set in 1912 two years before the world war. Eric asks Mr. Birling (his father) about his views on war, and his father replies

“People say that war is inevitable. And to that I say fiddlesticks”

Mr. Birling clearly believes that Germany will not declare war on Britain. “the Germans don’t want war, nobody wants war” but the audience of 1946 know full well the Germans want war. Mr. Birling goes on to say,

“The worlds developing so fast that it’ll make war impossible”

The audiences in the theater were viewing the play in the year 1946, but the set year of the play is 1912. So the audience knows that Birlings comments about the Germans not wanting war are false and alluded, because the war began in 1914,m two years after the play was set.

Mr. Birling also talks about the Titanic explaining how fast mankind is moving forward and progressing. He says the titanic is “unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable. That is what you’ve got to keep your eye on, facts like that.” The audience also knows that the titanic sank on its first voyage. All of these incorrect comments of Mr. Birlings are the use of dramatic irony and I think the author has used it well.

When the inspector first arrives at the Birling household he excloses that a woman has committed suicide, Mr. Birling is not bothered or interested and these new events and fails to see what it has to do with him. Once the inspector tries leads him into realizing that him firing Eva Smith lead to her suicide he still does not care or even feel slightly responsible. “I can’t accept any responsibility”. Mr. Birling refuses to believe that him firing Eva Smith started a chain of events that lead to her death. Mr. Birling is a self centered individual who looks out for him self even before his family and seems to not have a guilty conscience or feel that he has treated anyone unfairly.

There are other characters in the play who take a different approach to the news produced to them by the inspector. A character such as this is Sheila Birling, Mr. Birling’s only daughter. Unlike her father Sheila doesn’t believe that getting Eva Smith fired was acceptable or respectable. She feels remorse and wishes she had never acted out those actions that may have done so much damage.

From when the Inspector enters the house, he goes about asking questions in a rude manner and he receives hostility for it mainly from Mr. Birling, but asking questions in this way/manner only helped him to get information out of the other characters by intimidating them and frustrating them. An example of frustrating characters and trying to intimidate them is when the inspector asks Mr. Birling why he refused to give his workers a pay rise.

Inspector “why”

Birling “Did u say why??”

Inspector “Yes. Why did you refuse?”

Birling “Well, inspector, I don’t see that it’s any concern of yours how I choose to run my business. Is it now?”

Mr. Birling clearly doesn’t wish to answer the question at hand, but the inspector leads him to believe that he has to.