This is highly ironic when we consider the rest of the play as their good moods are suddenly drowned out by guilt. The Inspector arrives and informs them of a girl Eva Smith, who has just perished due to a ‘large dose of disinfectant’. From hearing the news, the family becomes shocked.
Priestley wrote this play to explore socialism and cooperating to make the poor richer. He looks at the issues of social class and responsibility through his characters by giving them all distinctive personalities; Mr. Birling is a ‘rather portentous’ man, who is described to be ‘in his fifties’. This tells us that Arthur Birling has a pompous nature which supports the ideas that he is rich. Mr. Birling is a good example of wealth, or perhaps greed, which are two aspects we can deduce from him. He believes in Capitalism, and leaving the people who can’t look after themselves in the dirt. J. B. Priestley has used this character to amplify fortune and wealth, but when the Inspector appears suddenly at his front door and reveals Eva’s horrible death, the whole family begins to feel an unmistakable feeling of guilt, and the inspector says all of them ‘helped to kill her’.
Mr. Birling is described as a ‘heavy looking’ man, equipped with ‘fairly easy manners’, but is quite ‘provincial in his speech’.
Mrs. Birling is a ‘rather cold woman’ and is said to be her ‘husband’s social superior’. This means she is quite an apathetic and reserved woman, which is a similar personality to her husband’s. From this description we can tell that it’s likely she won’t care that much for Eva’s death.
Both the Birling adults have a selfish belief in society, and don’t care as long as they’re happy. They both have capitalist views upon life, and prefer to look after themselves rather than help the general community.
Priestley cleverly uses dramatic irony in this play to make Birling look stupid, as he mentions that he disagrees with ‘some people’ who say ‘War is inevitable’, saying it’s all ‘fiddlesticks’. Even when Eric tries to cut his father off, Birling continues which makes him look even more ignorant in our eyes. He says that there ‘isn’t a chance of War’, and the world is ‘developing so fast that War is impossible’. He also declares that the Titanic was ‘absolutely unsinkable’. On its first voyage, the Titanic sunk, and two years after this play was set War was declared. Because of this dramatic irony Birling looks eve more ignorant and stupid, and now also seems stubborn to the audience. This worsens the audiences’ opinion on Mr. Birling.
Priestley also explores the themes of social class and responsibility by two other characters, Sheila and Eric. Upon hearing of Eva’s gruesome death, Eric is the only one who comments emotionally, as he calls ‘My God!’ involuntarily. He also comments when his father claims to have discharged her, and asks “is that why she committed suicide?”. Eric begins to turn on his own father and argue against him, taking the side of the Inspector. Birling defends himself but Eric shows more sympathy towards Eva. For example, Birling indicates to the inspector that he told the people he fired that “England is a free country”, but Eric argues that “It isn’t if you can’t go and work somewhere else”. It is easy to compare the way Eric and Birling feel about other people in this dialogue. They seem to speak from two different sides of a battle; Birling claims he hasn’t done anything wrong, but Eric will not believe his father.
Sheila also shows sympathy towards Eva. She makes a relatively long speech explaining her feeling about the girl’s agony. She states that she ‘couldn’t help thinking about this girl – destroying herself so horribly’. This emphasises the detail of Eva’s painful death, and makes us think harder about how horrible hr death really was. The inspector, instead of trying to make her feel better, adds t her misery by mentioning the poor quality of life Eva was leading before she passed away. He claims she had to put up with ‘Two months, with no work, no money coming in, and living in lodgings’, and that she had ‘no relatives to help her, few friends’ and she was also apparently ‘lonely’ and ‘feeling desperate’.
Sheila replies to this, stating ‘It’s a rotten shame’ for Eva to have gone through this.
Another example of Sheila showing her true feelings for poor people is when she points out “These girls aren’t cheap labour – they’re people”.
The reason why Sheila and Eric feel pity for Eva is probably because they heard of her poor living conditions; nobody would like to ‘live in lodgings’ and have no money. Sheila and Eric clearly have much stronger socialist views than their father, as Birling doesn’t seem to think he has any responsibility over the matter. Sheila and Eric are in a younger generation, the same one as Eva, and are more sympathetic to the plight of the working classes. At the start of the play Sheila and Eric are a lot like their parents, but by the end they seem to care more for taking responsibility in their actions.
The effect this may have on the audience is that they might begin to think Birling is a bad man, and that he is selfish and uncaring for anybody else. The audience may start to support Sheila and Eric in their argument for socialism, and agree with them.
The inspector is a very mysterious man, and though he ‘needn’t be a big man’, upon sight he creates ‘an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness’. Priestley has cleverly designed this character, saying that he ‘speaks carefully, weightily’, and also mentions that the inspector has a ‘disconcerting habit of looking hard’ at the person he address before speaking to them. Again, this emphasizes how important stage directions are to Priestley.
He interrogates the Birlings and Gerald, who are very unhappy to have the inspector present, and it seems he arrived at an awkward time, since the family were just celebrating an ‘occasion of engagement’ between Sheila and Gerald. The inspector immediately drains them of their glee like a dark messenger. The inspectors’ role in the play is to arrive at the Birlings’ house and question them for information about the death of a girl, named ‘Eva Smith’. He tells them all that she had ‘died in the infirmary just two hours ago’, and she had been taken there that afternoon from ‘swallowing a lot of strong disinfectant’. To make Eva’s death sound even worse and to help summon the audience’s sympathy, he goes into the graphic detail of telling them she was ‘burnt inside out’. During his visit the inspector asks a lot of questions, and frequently interrupts the Birlings, to help give out his impression of ‘massiveness’.
A lot of his sentences are short, which help to emphasize his sense of authority, but they still make a lot of sense. When Mr. Birling asks the inspector whether he is there for some ‘trouble about a warrant’, he merely replies with a short “No, Mr. Birling”. Birling feels awkward and impatient upon hearing this, and so he tries to restart the conversation. He tries to use his social position to intimidate the inspector; but even boasting that he is the ‘owner of a business’ does not seem to stir the inspector at all.
J.B. Priestley uses the inspector’s ‘false’ name, Inspector Goole, to make the audience think in a particular way. His name sounds like ‘ghoul’, which is the name given to a dead being that people believe haunt deserted houses. Upon hearing the name ‘Goole’ the audience may think the inspector is a ghost who may have come to get his revenge on the Birlings, or perhaps he could be a figment of their imagination. Just hearing the inspector’s name will make the audience eager to find out who he is and what his purpose is with the Birlings.
A dramatic device is something a writer uses to catch the audiences’ attention. One dramatic device that Priestley uses in this play is the use of dialogue as the inspector tells the family and Gerald of Eva Smith’s death. The information of any character dying in a play will immediately catch the audience’s attention, and since the inspector has come to see the Birlings about it, then the audience begins to think the death was related to them. They may also think he has come to question them about her, or even to accuse them of killing her. It’s possible that the inspector is related to Eva – but the audience can only find out by listening to the dialogue. This is why interesting dialogue is useful in making the audience aware and pay attention to the story.
Another dramatic device Priestley uses is when he starts to imply Mr. Birling isn’t the only one guilty of Eva’s suicide. He says to Sheila that when Eva was ‘working at Milwards’, a clothes shop, a customer ‘complained about her’, so she had to leave. Sheila asks when this happened, and the inspector shows her a photograph nobody else gets to see. Sheila’s reaction to the photograph the minute she sees it makes it obvious she is the ‘customer’ that complained. Therefore, she may also be guilty of Eva’s suicide. The audience will want to verify this. The photograph is also effective because the audience do not get to see it either. This is another dramatic device.
Priestley includes these dramatic devices to keep the audience interested. They are successful, because they made me want to know what happens next and whether the Birlings will find a way out of these accusations.
I conclude that ‘An Inspector Calls’ is an excellently-written play, and was introduced to the world at an effective time. Although the play isn’t very fun to read, it captures the audience’s imagination and keeps them hooked on the storyline.
The play’s purpose has touched many, and Priestley tries to make us understand that if we all work together, the world will be a better place.