Then you see the Birling family and Gerald Croft, they are all wearing evening dresses this suggests to the audience that these people are very powerful and that this family is very formal.
Although there are seven characters, I am going to only describe two of them, namely, Mr and Mrs Birling. Firstly, I will start with Mr Birling. He plays a brilliant part in the play and he like to be in control. He especially dislikes not being in control and enjoys doing exactly as he pleases. He will not tolerate any one obstructing his will and is confident, sometimes over confident. He feels he is superior to those around him, we the audience can tell this by the way he talks, his reactions, his facial expressions and tone of his voice. His tone of voice will vary, depending on to whom he is talking to eg, when he talks to the inspector, when the inspector says something Mr Birling does not like, he raises his voice to try and regain control of the situation.
Mr Birling has also not learned anything from what the inspector has put them through, Mrs Birling also hasn’t learned, this is suggested to the audience as Mr Birling says “Inspector, what inspector !” at the end. Mrs Birling agrees with him, this also shows the either of them has not learned anything, whereas Sheila and Eric have learned something. You can tell this when Sheila says “I wont forget him, especially because of the way he made me feel”.
Mrs Birling is a very cold hearted woman; she is also a snob who looks down at people. This is shown to the audience when she says “seemingly absurd, a person of that sort”. She also does not like people who stand up to her like the inspector, like when the inspector was questioning her and gets her to confess to the involvement of Eva Smith’s death. You can also tell that she does not want to talk to the inspector about this as she turns her back to him and tries to ignore him, trying also to answer as few questions as possible; she tries her best not to take any blame.
Also, another good part was when she said to the inspector “the culprit of Eva Smith’s death should be dealt with severely”. Eventually, when she realises that it was Eric, she says “No, no, I can’t believe it!, I won’t believe it”, and after everything she said about Eric, she didn’t even realize that she was condemning her own son. Her facial expressions showed us, the audience that Mrs Birling was distraught that her only son had done such a thing.
A good surprise during the play was when the audience found out that Gerald was previously dating Eva Smith under the name of Daisy Renton but at the same time, Gerald was also dating Sheila. This is one surprise I was not expecting, as Gerald did not seem the sort of man who would do this, he appeared to be more respectable.
One of the beat parts in the play where suspense is used very well is at the end of the play, when the phone rings and Mr Birling answers it and his facial expression show that something has happened. Suspense works well here because for about a minute he was on the phone and he said “What” as if he wasn’t expecting anything to happen but it looked as if he was shocked for some reason this and puts down the phone and after he tells the rest of the family that a girl has died of drinking disinfectant (she committed suicide.) and that an inspector was on the way to the house. I noticed that this was exactly what the inspector said happened this makes us think if the inspector is a supernatural figure. Spooky music then come it to it this makes us the audience think what’s going to happen next and put them in even more suspense. Mr Birling then walk towards the study room where the inspector is, some spooky, but exciting at the same time starts this also build up more suspense for the audience it makes the audience and when he opens the door the inspector has disappeared, there was no way he could of got out of the window because it was barred up and there was only one other way out which was past the family
J.B.Priestley does this to let the audience decide weather or not what happens next or weather or not the inspector was a supernatural figure and he gives us the choice if its going to be the same inspector that is coming to the house.