Responsibility and Guilt in An Inspector Calls

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Muslim Stevenson D6-TA

Responsibility and Guilt in An Inspector Calls

‘An Inspector Calls’ was written in 1945 by John Boynton Priestley. He was born on the 13th of September 1884 in Bradford, England. He died on the 14th August 1984 in Warwickshire and was widely respected as a great English writer and broadcaster.

Priestley was born in a highly respectable suburb in Bradford. His father was a teacher and his mother died when he was young. He worked in the wool trade after he had left grammar school but had always had ambitions of being a writer and he became one when he reached the age of thirty. In much of his work he drew on memories of his time in Bradford after he had moved south. Priestley wrote more than fifty plays the most famous of which are, ‘Dangerous Corners (1932)’, ‘When We Are Married (1938)’, and ‘An Inspector Calls (1945)’. His first major success though came with the novel ‘The Good Companions’ which earned him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and made him a national figure. Many of his works have a political aspect. For example ‘An Inspector Calls’ contains many references to Socialism. He was also a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. He declined lesser honours before accepting the Order of Merit in 1977. He married three times and had four daughters and one son.

In ‘An Inspector Calls’ the main themes are status, love, power, guilt, responsibility, honesty and lies. The play is set in 1912 because it gives the audience a more dramatic impression of the differences between rich and poor. In 1912 the people were vastly socially divided. There were a lot of lower class people who were very poor and very few upper class rich people, a lot of the rich people disliked the working class and disrespected them. Among the political issues receiving the most attention at the time was the need to improve working conditions for the average English employee, and the question of voting for women. Using the play, Priestley attacks the social standards of the time, a time in which people were just concerned for themselves with no concern for the welfare of the community. Priestley was a socialist and believed that people should either share their wealth or help those in need. In several of his plays he tried to persuade people to become socialist. He uses ‘An Inspector Calls’ to voice some of his beliefs e.g. what can happen if we ignore the feelings of others. He also uses the play to point out that the way people behaved in those times was wrong. By setting the characters of the play in a time of innocence and hope, Priestley can speak strongly to his audiences who have lived through a time of despair. The pride and complacency of the Birling’s seems all the more foolish to an audience who knows what is about to happen to the British people. The lessons that Eric and Sheila learn are even more poignant when one realizes that very soon all classes in England, upper, middle and lower, will be involved in the same tragic war. In the play Priestly seems to be asking the question, “Just what kind of society are we fighting to save?”

In Act 1, the play starts with a wealthy family celebrating an engagement in a very extravagant fashion, nothing could be happier. Mr Birling, Mrs Birling, Eric, Sheila and Gerald are sitting around the dining table discussing Gerald and Sheila’s recent engagement. Gerald and Sheila are young, healthy and prosperous. Everyone is dressed up and in a good mood, the food is excellent; and Mr Birling even has special port to drink a toast with. The bickering between Sheila and Eric is friendly, Sheila adores her engagement ring: “I’ll never let it go out of my sight for an instant.” After a good evening meal with loved ones the stresses of daily life seem unimportant. Here everyone is content, and behaving and saying the right things. The future looks rosy. But there are hints of conflict under the surface… Things are not right as there are some unanswered questions:

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  • Gerald’s family (the Crofts) are more established as their business is bigger than the Birling family’s so they are therefore socially superior. Arthur Birling is aware of this problem. He wants Gerald to tell his parents that he might be getting a knighthood he does this because he is trying to impress them.
  • Gerald was away in the summer and he didn’t see Sheila at all for a whole month. He said he was very busy at work. But she is suspicious even though she appears to be half serious, half playful: “Yes, except for last summer, when ...

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