In Act one all the characters seem to be pleased with themselves, Mr and Mr Birling are pleased that their daughter is getting married to Gerald and that Mr Birling’s company (Birling and C.O) is joining Gerald’s fathers company so he will receive more money, but in this scene all this happiness is not all that it seems. Lord and Lady Croft had not arrived to the celebration like they had promised, Eric is nervous about something in his mind and Sheila wonders where Gerald was last summer. These are the first hints that something wrong is going to happen to the family, in the audience.
At the start of the play Mr Birling is described as a “heavy looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties but rather provincial in his speech” In other words he is narrow- minded and unsophisticated. He is proud of himself, as he had worked his way up in the world. He boasts about being mayor and tries to impress Inspector Goole but fails. He is optimistic of the future and is very confident that there will be no war and the Titanic is actually an unsinkable ship. But the irony of this is that the audience knows that the titanic will sink and there will be a world war so Mr Birling’s judgement throughout the play will be doubted. Mr Birling is extremely selfish, as he believes that a man has to look after number one, “a man has to make his own way” and he believes that socialist ideas and the importance of a community is garbage. Mr Birling wants to protect his reputation, as it is his reputation, which makes him have such a high status. When Inspector Goole interviews him his pompousness gets the better of him and he tells everything he knows about his incident with Eva Smith. In Act 2 he is worried that the press will view the story “I’ve got to cover this up as soon as I can”. J.B.Priestly created Mr Birling as a snobbish, self-centred, portentous, middle fifties aged man to instigate that there was a need for a social change as the high class and low class ideas were too separate. He wanted to attack the higher class as they thought that because they had a higher status than the lower class they have more rights, they don’t have to have a sense of community as they could look after themselves with their money, they thought they had no problems of there own as they are rich and they were always right but J.B.Priestly portrays this by the example of Mr Birling saying that there will not be a world war and that the Titanic would not sink. Mr Burling represents the opposite of J.B.Priestly’s ideas: the togetherness of a community and socialism. Mr Burling is shown to be right about the little things like him being interviewed by the press if his story escapes his house but his arrogance and pompousness makes him wrong about the important things like the Titanic (which can be used as a metaphor to show Mr Birling’s status; sinkable which Inspector Goole makes possible) and the start of the first and second world war. Mr Burling’s hypothesises would seem ironic to a 1945 audience as they know that Mr Burling’s predictions was due to his pompousness and they will begin to doubt his suggestions as the play progresses.
In the two pages before the inspector leaves (55pg-56pg) many of the characters personalities have changed. Sheila is aware of what she did was wrong and is ashamed “(bitterly) I know. I had her thrown out of a job”. Eric has learnt his lesson as he tells his parents that there is nothing to hide as it will all come out anyway “It does not matter if they give you a knighthood now” Mr Burling by this point of the play has not changed and is still pompous and selfish as always “(angrily) There will be a scandal”. This change of character in Eric and Sheila implies that there was hope for the younger generation who can change for the future “I’m very impressionable on the young ones”. The reason why J.B.Priestly thought this as Eric and Sheila (the younger generation) had sympathy for the strikers, which is an idea, which Mr Birling is frightened and disapproves of, they are not afraid to admit their faults and refuse to cover it up “ the fact remains that I did what I did ” on the other hand Mr and Mrs Burling are too old to set into different ideas so follow their current one, this makes them confident in what they are saying an example of this is Mr Birling’s predictions. They do not see what they have done wrong as they have never been confronted with the law before. Optimistically it is the young, which will shape future society.
After these hints Inspector Goole arrives. The Inspector acts as a catalyst in the play as he controls the pace and tension. An example of this is when he says, “STOP!” he changes the swift pace of the play immediately into a slow pace where he immanently announces his speech. J.B.Priestly created Inspector Goole in this way to make him no ordinary inspector. The inspector is a role model for the younger generation as he has high authority, which is displayed in this scene.
The most dramatic part of the play is when Inspector Goole shouts, “STOP!” before he goes the play enters a dramatic climax. J.B.Priestly wanted to stop the arrogance of the rich and the capitalism, which fuelled them, which he loathed and teach them that community, is important “we are all part of one body”. He uses Eva Smith as a low class woman to represent the people who has no rights as these where the people who were being affected by the absence of community. J.B.Priestly used a poor, young woman as these groups of people were affected the most during the era of Capitalism. Groups with no rights were affected by gender and status. The writer of the play made the character that had been murdered a young girl to make the audience sorry for her and think that the Birling’s were not and proud family. During this scene a director could use slides in the background showing what the absence of community will do to the world by showing pictures of suffering and the world war or the director could use high amounts of lighting on the actor playing inspector Goole to portray his importance. This is the most important speech in the play as it is what the play is based on, Priestly’s message. This speech is all of Priestly’s ideas of what is wrong with society, what is needed to improve it and what the consequences are “ blood, fire and anguish”. The play was made to make the audience react to it and follow its message. This type of play is known as didactic as it has a moral and a political message.
The ending of the play is effective as it leaves the audience on a sudden cliffhanger where they can interact with the characters feelings. When the Birling’s find themselves off the hook you can see which characters have not learned their lesson and which have. The younger generation have learned there lesson but the older generation has not as I have explained earlier. The relief of there not being a girl in the infirmary releases some tension in the play - but then the phone rings again announcing that the real inspector is coming to question them about the suicide of a girl dramatically restores tension leaving the play with an unanticipated twist. This is where the ones who have understood what the meaning of the visit by inspector Goole was about have nothing to worry about as they have already questioned their conscience and would have already learned their lesson (younger generation).
The twist in the play causes the audience to ask many questions such as, who was the inspector? The inspector in the play-acted like a God like figure due to the way he had high authority and blamed each member of the Birling family for the things they did to make Eva Smith commit suicide “remember what you did!” When the Inspector says this he sounds like someone with high authority, like a judge or someone supernatural. The name Goole could be a play off word of ghoul, as the Inspector is not known of and has not ever been seen before.
