Secondly whenever he talks doesn’t go on and on, he talks straight to the point. For example where he says, “No. She wanted to end her life”,” She wasn’t pretty when I saw her today, but….” and “ (sharply) Come along, Mr Croft. What happened?”
The genre of this play is murder mystery but it is altered to be more political. This is mainly of J.B. Priestly’s socialist upbringing. I think that “Inspector Goole” is more of a mouthpiece for Priestly’s views. His dad was a socialist and was much like the character “Arthur Burling” which makes it very easy for Priestly to show how socialist think.
The inspector is not only used to find out the truth about the suicide but also to uncover home truths to the Burlings. He is also used as like a teacher or an educator to show everybody, not only on stage but also off stage as well, what is wrong with the world and how everybody is responsible for everyone else. Also he varies his sentence length, especially in the last speech, to put across his ideas very strongly. For example, “We don’t live alone, we are members of one body, and we are responsible for each other.”
Inspector Goole also uses three points in one speech to make it sound very dramatic. For example, “One Eva Smith has gone – but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us…” and “…then they will be taught in fire and blood and anguish.” The inspector has a very good method of interviewing people because he interviews and questions people one at a time so he can assess people one at a time which makes it easier to make a mental note of each person.
By the end of the play you are not quite sure whether the Inspector is a real person but through the play it gives you little clues to show you that he might be someone or something else. For example where he is concerned by moral laws the by criminal laws throughout the whole play, where he almost predicting the future, “with fire and blood and anguish”, which is aimed to show the Birlings the WW1 and the audience both WW1 and WW2, and also near the end where the person at the police station says that there is no Inspector Goole where it say, “I met a police sergeant I know down the road. I asked him about this Inspector Goole and described the chap carefully to him. He swore there wasn’t any Inspector Goole or anybody like him on the force here.”. Mr Birling rings the chief constable and comes up with the same conclusion that there is not Inspector Goole. Also his name Inspector “Goole” sounds and looks like the word “ghoul”.
At the end of play when the Birling’s and the audience think that they have discovered that the inspector is a fake and the whole crime was made up the Birlings get a phone call from the infirmary that said that a young girl has been brought in fitting the same description as Eva Smith.
