What are the social messages that JB Priestly aimed to convey to an audience in ‘An Inspector calls?’Explain how puts his message across using setting, characters and plot.

The setting of the play is the household of the Birling family in Brumley, in the Midlands in 1912. It was actually written 30 years later The Birling household is an upper middle class household where there are servants. The Birlings are having a grand dinner party and they are obviously wealthy. Mr Birling is a factory owner and employs cheap labour from the working classes. This was a time when the industrial revolution was beginning and farm workers were leaving the countryside to work in factories for very low wages and live in huge slums in the cities.

The play opens with the dinner party and Mr Birling is talking to the other guests seated around the table. He is telling them about his own values and says, " A man has to make his own way, has to look after himself"

This is when the doorbell rang and the Inspector appeared. The Inspector acts as Eva's representative as she is dead. The theme of the play is about the fate of the working classes who are represented by the poor and sad life and death of Eva. The Inspector is the person trying to show the upper middle class guests a different way of looking at their own society from the way that Mr Birling looks at it.

The characters in the play are gradually revealed by the conversations between them and the Inspector.

Mr Birling is selfish and does not like like taking responsibility for others problems. He is the capitalist person in the play who believes in 'every man for himself' and at the start of the play he is very outspoken about his self-centred world.

Mrs Birling is very protective of the family name even though she does not pay much attention to anyone in her family. She is a cold and uncaring woman who does not take any responsibility for the death of Eva. "I'm sorry she should have come to such an end, but I accept no blame for it at all"

Sheila Birling is getting married to Gerald. She is caring and accepts her responsibility for Eva's death. She is clever and independent and she is the character who really seems to be changed by the inspector's appearance as at the end she is genuinely sorry and seems to change her ways. "It's the only time I've ever done anything like that, I'll never never do it again to anybody" Sheila had complained about Eva in a shop and Eva had been sacked from her job as a result.

Eric Birling drinks a lot of alcohol and his family don't know. He is a bit spoilt and uncaring at the start but when he realises Eva is dead he is very shocked especially as Eva was pregnant with his baby. This was shown by his speech to his mother where he blamed her for Eva's death " you killed her. She came to you to protect me and you turned her away". By the end of the play he changes and argues with his father and shows he has changed his views from being like those of Mr Birling to being more caring and understanding about working class people. He also accepts responsibility for Eva's death.

Gerald Croft was getting married to Sheila even though he was seeing Eva for the whole summer. He got rid of her when he had got what he wanted which was sex. He accepts very little responsibility for Eva's death. He seems to feel some remorse about it when he says "She didn't blame me at all, I wish she had now, perhaps I would feel better about it" when he is talking about how he dumped her.

The inspector is a harsh person who gives cold hard stares at people. He has the skills to make people confess even though he is not a real inspector. He can travel through time and he tries to teach people lessons Goole means ghost and like a ghost he will keep coming back to haunt the family until they realize that their behaviour is wrong.

The Inspector appears as unreal in some ways as he knows everything about all the characters before they tell him these things. He seems to be more than just a police Inspector. In the play his character represents a sort of conscience as he asks questions of each of the Dinner guests that will cause them to think about the way they behaved.

As the plot of the play unfolds the audience realises that the Inspector must be some kind of supernatural force.

Then there is a phone call telling them that a girl has died and a police inspector is coming over to talk to them so they will have to go through the whole evening again. The inspector's speech tells people that Eva Smith was just one person representing millions more in a similar situation who all needed help and to accept responsibility for each other or they will be taught it in blood, fire and anguish.

The Inspector is used by JB Priestly to try and make the audiences of the time think about the systems of Government in power as it was shown just before an election and Priestly wanted to help get more support for the socialist party.

The message of the play is take responsibility for other people as well as yourself. I think what this is what someone who had just seen the play would think as they walked away from it.

At the end of the play the Inspector leaves the dinner party guests thinking about the evening. After he has left there is a telephone call from the police telling them about the murder of a girl and that an Inspector investigating her death is on his way.

This may be done to show that this cycle of the working classes suffering is being repeated again.

This message is still relevant to a 21st century audience because society in the western world is mainly capitalist and people act as individuals and do not take responsibility for others very often.

Sources

Text - An Inspector Calls by JB Priestly

Class notes

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Matthew Payne An Inspector Calls by J.B Priestly