Why do you think that An Inspector Calls still remains popular today? An Inspector Calls, written by J.B.Priestley, is about a middle class family named The Birlings

An Inspector Calls

By J.B.Priestley

Why do you think that An Inspector Calls still remains popular today?

An Inspector Calls, written by J.B.Priestley, is about a middle class family named The Birlings. The Birlings lived in an up and growing industrial town in the north midlands. Set in 1912, the Birlings were happily celebrating their daughter Sheila’s engagement to a respectable businessman, Gerald Croft. However, the modest celebration turned out to be more than eventful when an unexpected inspector arrives enquiring the suicide and death of a young girl names Eva Smith. Whilst doing so, the inspector unlocks a chain of family secrets along the way. The play, in its time, proved to be very popular, and still does so today.

In this play, I think that J.B.Priestley chose the characters very well. I think that what made the play so appealing is the way in which he gave each character such a strong personality. Each member of the Birling family has a unique personality and throughout the play some of the Birling family change. I do think however, that the Birlings as a whole family are quite stereotypical. The Birlings come across as a family that have wealth and seem to be quite a respected family of a high class. At the beginning of the play, the Birling family seem to be quite a closely bonded family but throughout the play this bond seems to drift apart as they recognise their differences. The family consists of four very unique and exciting individuals:

Arthur Birling- A very self-obsessed, wealthy business man, also very self-opinionated. The perfect example of an old snob. Obviously very proud of his achievements in life, but with his heart set on a knighthood which would be his ultimate achievement.

Sybil Birling- Considers herself high in regard to social standings, largely on the back of her husbands’ success and wealth. Possibly a ‘Hyacinth Bucket’ of her time. A very unlikeable woman who sees lots of people as being beneath her.

Sheila Birling- comes across as a very polite and obedient woman, looking forward to her engagement to Gerald Croft. However, as the play goes on, Sheila begins to realise the truth about herself and the Birling family, and begins to stand up against them.

Eric Birling-Quite an enclosed person. Eric’s personality is hard to detect. He seems to be the outcast of the family, and the family do not discover until later on in the play that Eric is in fact a heavy drinker and was to father a illegitimate child. A typical wealthy young man of the day.

I think that we can still associate the Birling family with people of today. For example, your wealthy young men of today, spending their money and time on drinking etc. I think that you come across people like this a lot of the time. Even with some of the younger generation, your stereotypical young and wild public school boys.

I think also that we can relate to the Birlings. I think we can all admit that we have a bit of Sybil inside of us, turning our noses up to people through our first impressions of them just like Sybil did when Eva came to her committee for help. We all have our Arthur Birling side when we think that we know more than we actually do. Throughout the play, we do not hear an awful lot about Eva and her Personality, other than the act that she was a very nice and pretty young woman. Possibly the most vital character in the play is the inspector. I think that the inspector is a very hard person to understand in the play. I think that although he comes across as a very strong and demanding character, he is very good in the way that he does not give too much away about himself. One thing that the inspector did not let the Birling family forget is the way in which that Eva Smith died. He did this in a very rude and direct manner saying things such as: ‘ Her position now is that she lies with a burnt-out inside on a slab.’
I think that the inspector came on very hard and I think that the clever way in which he came about thing silenced everyone in the end including Mr. Birling.

In the play, J.B.Priestley added a lot of serious issues that we still deal with today and prove to still be a problem in our society. The family relationship that the Birlings have I think we still get today. These are families that are close but you get the typical Arthur Birling in the family in the way in which they are very proud and arrogant and that see their family as being revolved around how high in class they are and wealth etc. In the play, there is proven to be alcoholism and prostitution. I think that it is more common today and back in the time when the play was set, it was seen to be less common and more of a big deal. An example of this is when the Birling family are so shocked to find that Eric Birling had been steadily drinking for a few years with out them knowing when Sybil says: ‘Besides, you’re not the type, you don’t drink’ I think that there is a lot of this today where parents do not know as much about their children’s lives as they think they do. Also, this is what makes the play so realistic because these things happen all the time. Another example of people being unaware of things is when Gerald Reveals to Sybil about a close friend of the family names Alderman Meggarty being a womaniser. And Sybil, of course, refuses to believe it. But, in fact Gerald had to rescue Eva Smith from being womanised by Alderman Meggarty in the palace bar. There is huge sense of prejudice in the play, especially with Sybil Birling when Eva Smith came to her committee for help, and made the mistake of using the surname ‘Birling’. When Eva did so, Sybil automatically took a grudge against her even though she failed to admit to it when the inspector questioned her stating: ‘I’m sorry she should have to come to such a horrible blame, but I accept no blame for it at all.’ There is a small issue in the play of unplanned pregnancies with Eva as the example. I do not think, however, that this is such a big deal today as it was back then because it is so much more common today. But back in 1912, if a woman was to have a baby without being married then it was seriously looked down upon.

I think that perhaps one of the main issues in the play is the way in which people were classed. I think that the message that the Birlings gave is that class is everything and the Birlings saw it as a very big thing, especially Arthur and Sybil Birling. It seemed to be that if you are of a lower class then you do not have much hope in the society and I think that Eva was of a low class, certainly a lower class than the Birlings. I think that, for this, Sybil looked down on Eva Smith very much so and so therefore did not give her a chance when Eva came to her committee for help. A typical example of this is when on page 47, Sybil says: ‘As if a girl of that sort’. To me, this clearly states that Sybil looked down on girls of ‘Eva’s sort’ and saw herself as superior. Using other quotes like ‘I didn’t like that girls manner’.
I think that classes still do exist today so we can relate to it. Not nearly to the extent that they did back in the day because I do not think that there is such a divide and so classes nowadays seem to mix a lot more. I think that by J.B.Priestley adding different classes, he has shown that it is not right to divide people by classes. But we need to ask ourselves, is Sybil a better person than Eva because she is of a higher class and wealth than her?

I think that all of the issues that J.B.Priestley uses are still important issues to us today and I think that it is what makes the play still popular because we can relate to the issues even if some of them are not to the same extent as they were back then.

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In the play, I think that J.B.Priestley added in a lot of dramatic devices. I think that this is what helped the play to be so dramatic to watch and to read. One of the main devices that he used was the way in which he used just one room throughout the whole of the play. To me personally, I think that this is better if you are watching it as a play. Especially if you think of how it is preformed because then you do not have to have any of the scene changes and also it makes it a lot simpler for people to follow. It also makes you feel that you are a lot more involved. One of the main effects that the use of one room gives is the amount of tension that builds up. Because everything is said and everything happens in the one room, I think that the tension at times is immense. All the secrets, sad times, excitement, arguments, and everything that the play is about happen in the same room. This also keeps you very much up to date with the play, for example: You will have no flash backs or different scene settings that maybe you will find hard to understand or keep up with. You will find that some of the best TV shows also use just the one room. The use of one door in the room makes entrances and exits a lot more exciting to watch. Having one door builds up a certain amount of tension that would not have been there before.

Small details that J.B.Priestley uses in the play, make it a lot more exciting to watch. For example, the lighting. Even though lighting is not a big factor when something is preformed on stage, I think that in ‘An Inspector Calls’ the lighting plays a vital effect on building up the tension. At the beginning of the play when they family are celebrating their daughters engagement the light in the room is bright and it gives the room an uplifting effect. However, when the inspector arrives, the lighting changes to a dull, red colour and the lighting in the room itself makes the atmosphere seem a lot more tense and uptight. Another small, but clever detail that J.B.Priestley adds in is the telephone. The way in which Priestley wrote it so that we only hear one side of the conversation helps to draw in peoples attention. It creates a sense of atmosphere, this is because your can only hear the side in which Arthur Birling is speaking and it makes you eager to hear the whole conversation. By adding in the telephone, Priestley gives the reader a link to the outside world and although the action is still happening inside of the house, the phone call links to outside of the room.

Another main device of the play is the photograph that the inspector kept. What made it so effective is the face that the viewer or the reader never saw the photograph. The stage directions of when the photograph is shown also drawn in a lot of attention. For example, on page 12:

‘Inspector, takes a photograph, about postcard size, out of his pocket and goes to Birling. Both Gerald and Eric rise to have a look at the photograph, but the inspector interposes himself between then and the photograph. They are surprised and rather annoyed. Birling stares hard, and with recognition, at the photograph, which the inspector then replaces in his pocket.’

Stage directions also make the play more dramatic when you are reading the play because it gives you an image in your head and it gives you much more of an understanding. For example, ‘Eric (uneasily)’ is a lot more effective than it would be if it was just ‘Eric’.

A small, but effective device that Priestley uses is the way in which the inspector interviews the Birling family one at a time. The inspector does this in a slow and steady manner and he often states that he is in no rush to interview all of the family. On page 33 when Arthur Birling suggests that the inspector interviews Eric next as he was tired, and the inspector replied with: ‘I’m sorry, but he’ll have to wait’. He also interviewed the Birlings one at a time and he did it in a chain so that all of the interviews would link up with one another. I think that this made it very clear and at the same time built up an amount of tension.

J.B.Priestley added in a bit of dramatic irony into the play and I think that it got the people drawn into it a lot more. A good example of this is on page 7 when Arthur Birling made one of his speeches and refers to the titanic as being ‘completely unsinkable’. This creates a lot of dramatic irony because as the audience, you know that in face the titanic did sink. So, you can then sit there and listen to this with a smug feeling because you know that you have one over on him. I think that Priestley used this as a great way in getting people to feel involved.

I think that all of the devices that Priestley has used have been very effective and although some of the devices may not seem to be such a big thing do actually make a difference, and it is small aspects of the play like the devices that he uses that makes it so appealing still today as well as the 1900’s.

As well as the play being very entertaining and cleverly written, I think that J.B.Priestley has written it so that we can learn a lot from it. There are a lot of issues that are mentioned In the play that we come across in our every day lives. And, although we may see the speeches from the characters in the play as entertainment, there is a lot of knowledge and purpose behind it. For example, womans rights. In the play it seems that Eva Smith does not have any rights as a woman, and I think that women are regarded as being not very important. An example of this is when Arthur and Gerald told the ladies in the house to leave the room while they spoke about business etc. I feel that woman at that time were not very well respected and it was In fact around the time that women might have been considered to have the vote. As a play writer, I feel that J.B.Priestley wanted his readers to learn something from the play about the time and the issues.

I think that in the play there is a conflict between the generations in the Birling family. I think that when the evening has ended, Eric and Sheila learn a lot from what happened and discover things about the family that they may not have noticed before. I think that they all learn something from what the inspector had to say. But I think that Sheila and Eric went about the whole enquiry better than their parents. This shows at the end of the first phone call when Mr. Birling tells everyone that there was in fact no body to have been reported to the infirmary and both Sybil and Arthur act as if nothing had happened. Sheila and Eric however, took a different approach and said to their parents not to start celebrating yet, and that they should take into account about all that the inspector said.

J.B.Priestley very affectively used cliffhangers throughout the whole play. As the audience, you think that you can fit everything together like a jigsaw, and then something completely different will happen and you see that your theory was wrong. The biggest shock of all though, is when The Birlings think that everything will be fine, and Arthur Birling will get his knighthood, when ‘WHAM’, the second phone call arrives reporting that a body had been reported. Personally, when I read this I did not see it coming and it was a typical cliffhanger ending because it finishes and you do not know what happened next. The clever way in which Priestley did this made the whole play more effective

I think that the reason J.B.Priestley wrote this play is so that he could get his opinion across, and he very thoughtfully did so through a play. I think the issues that he brought up during the play were that society must change, and that we are all responsible for each other. This shows in Mr Birling’s speech at the beginning of the play. J.B.Priestley was in fact a socialist, and so I think that his opinions came across through the inspector. This is because the inspector was always pointing out how we should be responsible for ourselves and for each other and that no one should be treated differently because of their class or wealth. Also, it seems that he thinks that young people should have their right to speak up for what they believe or what they think .He did this through Sheila, when in the play she says that what she has to say matters as well.

I think that J.B.Priestley is a man that has a lot of opinions and I think that he has used inspector calls to get his points across. He was a socialist so he believes that everyone should be treated fairly. I think that he uses the Birling family as a prime example, and at the end when the phone calls comes back to the Birlings that a girls body has been reported, I think as a reader you see that Priestley is using the story as an example. I think he clearly gets across how you should not prejudice someone because they are not the same class or wealth as you. A quote from the play that the inspector uses I think is what J.B.Priestley is trying to get across and that is: ‘We are members of one body, we are responsible for each other!’

By Sophie Lyne-ley.