"The Inspector in 'An Inspector Calls' by J.B. Priestly plays a crucial role in the drama creating tension and mystery by forcing the family to face up to their responsibility"

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Navid Moosavi-Hejazi

“The Inspector in ‘An Inspector Calls’ by J.B. Priestly plays a crucial role in the drama creating tension and mystery by forcing the family to face up to their responsibility”

How does the playwright create this tension and mystery and explain how you would direct the actor playing the inspector to bring these traits out?

The play An Inspector Calls was written in 1945 within a week of World War Two ending but is set before World War One. J B Priestley wrote this play intentionally as he saw an urgent need for social change and used the play to express his desire for social equality. The time span between the dates used (1945-1912) is to make us aware of what has happened and learn from mistakes made. Priestley hoped his play would give society the chance with hindsight to look back on the past and not just carry on life in the same way as before. J.B. Priestley took full advantage of writing in hindsight and makes sure that it will make the audience realize how wrong they may have been assuming future events. The play is set in an industrial city in the Midlands of 1912 concerns a wealthy industrial Arthur Birling, his family, the fiancé Gerald Croft and an Inspector. It shows how the family each helps to destroy a young woman’s life, Eva Smith through their selfish and callous attitudes which results in her death. The play runs parallel to what was happening to society at the time. Each uncaring action/statement is backed up with ensuing consequences.

J.B.Priestley's "An Inspector Calls" is a well-made play which attacks the social morals of his time; it contains all the ingredients of a well-made play, this is because it is captivating, and it holds the attention of the audience. It achieves this by the use of climaxes, the slow unraveling of the plot and the use of the detective-who done it style. Despite this Priestley is concerned with the darker side of Capitalism. "An Inspector Calls" is Priestley's call for reformation. Priestley sees the nation as a society with communal, rather than individual responsibilities which is slowly being lead to believe otherwise. The members of the Birling family are only concerned with individual gain and profit over person. They are responsible for the young women's death by treating her as property, and it is this lust for material wealth that Priestley speaks out against. "An Inspector Calls" is a well-structured and well-made play because it contains many factors that captivate and sustain the attention of the audience.
        

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One of the factors that makes the play captivating is the use of climax, the way it holds the audience all the way through, building up slowly, gathering the plot as it goes on and then finally ends in a stunning climax of mystery, for example the way the Inspector extracts small threads of information from the members of the family and slowly puts the picture together and narrows it down to the main culprit as the climax.
       

The who done it genre keeps the audience guessing all the way through the play, and as clues ...

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