Inspector Calls: Juicy Examples to learn for the Exam

• Opening – sets the stage + dramatic irony abounds 

The very detailed stage directions suggest that all is well and harmonious: 

‘celebrating’ ‘are pleased with themselves’ but there are lots of clues that actually all is not well with this family. 

Class is emphasised from the stage directions and opening lines of the play: the Birlings are shown to be socially ambitious: ‘evening dress’ cigars, fine port ‘first-class’ dinner.  

Mrs Birling is described in the stage directions as ‘her husband’s social superior’, implying arrogance, and foreshadowing that the class system she represents may be unsettled by the play 

Mr Birling ‘heavy-looking… provincial in his speech’ Mr Birling has an accent, which reveals that he has made his own money rather than being an aristocrat>>> insecure, no compassion, arrogant 

‘nonsense’, ‘a man has to make his own way’ ‘unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable’ (Titanic) dramatic irony – the audience of 1945 know that The Titanic sank therefore Mr Birling was wrong! (In fact, Priestly wants us to realise that he is DANGEROUSLY DELUDED… and that if we as the audience share any of Birling’s political views, we are dangerous deluded too.) 

Everything that looks settled and harmonious will be systemically shaken apart by the Inspector. This family will break up and this foreshadowed: 

• Foreshadowing in Act 1 

Shelia… to her fiancé ‘Last summer when you never came near me’ (He was cheating) 

LIGHTING ‘Pink and intimate’ lighting when the curtain rises changes to ‘brighter, harder’ when the Inspector comes in 

Shelia – model response to political message/younger generation 

It frightens me the way you talkWe did her in all right 

They’re not cheap labour, they’re people 

• Priestley’s characterisation of Eva – Eva as a plot device/tool of the Inspector 

 Eva’s death – apparently the hinge for the whole plot, but revealed to be made up…. (in the double twist at the end) 

‘She lies with a burnt-out inside on a slab’ (Inspector) >> cold, heartless society. Eve’s death creates PATHOS.  

Eva represents the movement for women’s rights in early 19th C – suffragette movement, ‘That girl’, ‘impertinent’. 

Eva is noble. Gerald: She didn’t blame me at all. I wish to God she had now. Perhaps I’d feel better about it.  

Eva exposes the social violence that lurked beneath polite Edwardian society (1912). 

Eric: ‘I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty – and I threatened to make a row’. 

Disturbing. Each of the Birlings turns ‘nasty’, and construct their moral positons and find ways of justifying themselves. Eva is punished because she behaves in a way which challenges their sense of what they deserve because of their social position. Each of the Birlings is finding a way to launder class cruelty. E.g. Mrs Birling and the Brumley’s Women’s charitable association. She represents charity and love of one’s neighbour but ironically actually punishes and deprives the mother of her own grandchild.  

In the end, Eva internalises the violence meted out to her by the Birlings throughout the play. She ‘destroys herself’ by drinking disinfectant. Dying by ‘disinfectant’ is also significant. It is a way of purifying herself of the contaminating effects of the Birlings.  

Eva’s name >> represents all women (Eve from the Bible – the first woman). For Birling, 

Eva is a business equation. For Priestley, she is the epitome of a human being, - she has dignity and worth - and her name constantly reminds us of this. After the double coup de theatre, the audience of left with the unsettling realisation that she did not actually exist, and forced to rethink their initial emotional response to her story.  

The Inspector can be seen as Eva’s alter-ego. In her absence, he speaks the anger that she could not say or acknowledge.  

Eva and the Inspector are very similar in that they are both hard to grasp. For Eva all we have is a photograph and a ‘rough sort of diary’. As the play develops both Eva and the Inspector grow in symbolic meaning and resonance. They become the most complex and compelling characters in the play, even as the audience realise that the ‘facts’ that we know about them are probably not true. This enables Eva to represent ‘millions and millions of Eva Smith’ much more effectively.  

• Priestley’s characterisation of the Inspector – eerie, larger than life, omniscient 

‘an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness. He speaks carefully, weightily and has disconcerting habit of looking hard at a person he addresses before actually speaking.’ 

‘one person one line of enquiry at a time’  systematic, ruthless, scary - slightly unhuman 

‘he’s giving us the rope so that we’ll hang ourselves’ (Shelia) 

The Inspector is hard to pin down. He represents Priestley, God, divine retribution – He is elusive.  

• The Inspector’s climatic final speech before he leaves 

The speech is chock-full of rhetorical devices – short sentences, commands, hyperbole, emotive language, lists of 3. 

‘But just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone – but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us…’  

‘We are members of one body. We are responsible for one another’  - the political mantra of the play, articulated by the Inspector in his climatic ‘Fire, blood and anguish speech’. This echoes how the Bible describes community in 1 Corinthians. Priestley can be seen to be PREACHING a quasi-religious dogma here and suggesting that a radical change of political system is the only thing that can change and heal society.  

‘Fire and blood and anguish’ the judgement that will come if society does not change >> biblical imagery of hell >> makes the Inspector seem fearsome like God >>>> high dramatic impact>>>>>dramatic irony (WW1 and WW2 did come, and perhaps the audience will start to question whether it really is that simple) 

‘Each of you helped to kill her.’ (The Inspector becomes a Judge/Divine figure – it’s not about what happened, it’s about making the characters own up to their guilt and repent/change …. He becomes a political activist with all the religious zeal of a priest…. 

 ‘That was the police. A girl has just died on her way to the infirmary. And a police inspector is on his way here – to ask some -questions’   >>> Double coup de theatre/twist at end – leaves Mr Birling speechless (he trails off at the end, stunned and spooked out) and leaves the audience with massive questions. 

The double twist enables the Inspector to be a figure that could come and interrogate each one of us. 

- makes the play personal suddenly. Is it about 1912 and this one dysfunctional family? Or is it about us?  

- enables him to seem like the voice of God/conscience…. 

This is effective but controversial: The play received hostile reception in 1945 due to strong and controversial political message. You could argue that it remains controversial and thought-provoking now but for different reasons (our society is different/has different kinds of social injustices).  

• The use of timing  

Timing of entrances and exits throughout, heightens dramatic tension and helps the audience anticipate who is going to be interrogated and exposed next: 

- The Inspector arrives just as Mr Birling has given a long speech on how a man ‘has to look after himself’.  

- Act 3 begins just as Mrs Birling has realised Eric is the father of Eva’s child.  

• The use of contrast  

Older/younger generation 
Eva/Sheila 
Eric/Gerald 

• The different genres of An Inspector Calls 

Realist play  (dining room and stage = very realist) 

Mystery play/detective  - title ‘An Inspector Calls’ 

Morality play – depicting the evils of the seven deadly sins  

Political treatise of class tensions 

Allegory 

Priestley cleverly mixes this genres together to have different effects. He uses realism to present the materialism of the Birlings and he uses allegory and the supernatural to dismantle their way of life.  

• Context: Priestley’s engagement with politics and philosophy  

Priestley himself was a political commentator/political activist – he hosted a popular radio show until 1940 when it was cancelled due to pressure from the Conservatives to silence his left-wing politics.  Then he turned to writing plays. An Inspector Calls was first performed in Moscow.  

Priestley was influenced by theories of time that were emerging in his lifetime that suggested that time is not linear but that you can re-enter your life once more from the beginning. (Ouspensky’s Theory and Dunne’s Theory). You can see these ideas influencing the cliff-hanger ending of the play where it seems like the characters could be given a second chance: 

‘That was the police. A girl has just died….’  

• Setting: Set in 1912 but performed in 1945 

An Inspector Calls is set pre-Titanic, pre First and Second WW but is written after the Second World War  

It is set on the eve of new world breaking – a world of world wars and Titanics sinking…. 

dramatic irony because the audience knows that society did collapse and that to a certain extent ‘fire, blood and anguish’ did engulf industrial Britain and change it forever.  

• Critical response. “Poisonous revisionist propaganda”. 

Many people have found the play to be too didactic. Different interpretations! What do you think a 2017 interpretation should be?