AN INSPECTOR CALLS

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An Inspector Calls

Written in 1945, set in pre-war 1912 and first performed in 1946. Written by JB Priestley and considered to be one of Priestley's best work.

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Inspector Goole

Throughout the play, the Birlings never really find out about The Inspector and who he is. All we get from him is a name - Inspector Goole. His name alone had caused many theories to spur about who he may actually be, as we know that he is not a genuine inspector.

The name Goole is a homophone for a ghoul, and ghoul is a synonym for ghost. This has caused speculation that The Inspector wasn't even at all real, but merely ghost to teach the Birling family a moral lesson.

Another theory is that The Inspector is actually the one who killed Eva Smith and he simply tricked the Birling family into revealing everything to one another and convincing them it was their fault so that they would convince the authorities it was them all along, and not The Inspector.

The Inspector comes off as an eerie character who brings with him a heavy atmosphere. He somehow manages to overpower even Arthur Birling and he also managed to get the entire Birling family to admit to any involvement they had with Eva, simply by having a photo, a brief knowledge of the girl's life and a knowing look.

I'm sure that for many years to come to the nature of who The Inspector was, or what The Inspector was, will still remain something that people shall ponder over. Unfortunately, with the death of JB Priestley on August 14th, 1984, so died the answers to all the questions I'm sure any reader, audience member or actor of ' An Inspector Calls' would have.

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Eric

Eric is a well mannered young gentleman with an odd demeanor. We see him progress to a much more confident man as the play carries out, but we also see him come to terms with his past actions and his drinking habit. He is the perfect portrayal of your stereotypical, upper-class lad; someone who thinks that the world should be handed to them on a silver platter, regardless of how reckless they are.

Eric's only saving grace is that he is on the more remorseful half of the Birling family, consisting of himself, Shelia and, at times, Gerald. His parents both seem to have no idea about the events that have taken place that link Eric so directly to Eva Smith or any of his habits. This is evident when Eric's drinking is brought to light and Mrs. Birling says "You don't get drunk-" "[Shelia] Of course he does. I told you he did." This implies that even Shelia knew more about Eric than his parents and simply how self-concerned Mrs. Birling was, to such an extent she didn't realize her own sons drinking habit.

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Sybil Birling

From the very beginning of the play, we see Mrs. Birling as a very self-righteous and prideful woman, mostly due to her social class and how, at that time, the social hierarchy meant everything as to who you were and what you could do in life. We first get to see her self-righteousness rather early on in the way she speaks to Shelia, an example of this is when she says "When you're married you'll realize... You'll have to get used to that, just as I had." The language that is used here is very patronizing lexis, Sybil is talking down to Shelia as if she were a child, not someone who was about to be married.

It also implies that Sybill sees herself as someone that seems to know a lot more about life and how things should be. For example, when she says "You'll have to get used to that," she's talking about having husbands that work a substantial amount of the time, this suggests that Sybil holds the, now seen as outdated, view that men run the household, should be the soul bread winners and what they say goes. She demonstrates this a fair few times throughout the play by complying to almost everything Arthur tells her.

In the final act we see Sybil come to a similar conclusion to that of her husbands; that, if the inquiry was not from a genuine inspector and no scandal would be made, then it was all water under the bridge and simply another foul happening to rush under the carpet. As we found out, the Birling family have a rather unique talent for hiding scandals, from both the press and each other.

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Gerald Croft

From the very start, we see Geral as a very business oriented man and someone who is eager to impress Arthur Birling, an example of this is when Gerald says "So if that's the only obstacle, sir". This suggests that Gerald sees Arthur Birling as someone of a higher standing to him, which undoubtedly he is, but it comes through especially with the use of the word "sir" that makes the audience see how much respect Gerald holds for Arthur Birling.

The keenness to impress that Gerald shows can be later explained to him trying to make up, somewhat, for what he did all last summer when he was " busy at the works all that time."

At the end of the play, Geral sits on the fence with where he stands in the morality of the entire scenario of this young girl's death, or not death. He realizes that he, and the Birling family, all drove this girl to the point she was at, and even when it's proven that there is no girl he is far more willing to accept that he was still in the wrong by doing what he did with Daisy Renton, even when there was no death involved.

But Gerald is the one that comes up with the theory of it all being a hoax in the first place, this could be down simply to denial of having anything to do with the death of this young girl.

But he expects everything goes back to exactly as it all was before and he expects Shelia to take him back, even after his affair has come to light. He also expects that there be no guilt for him to hold or any responsibility for what he did to Daisy now he's found out that she isn't dead, at that point at least.

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Shelia

Shelia Birling is, at the beginning of the play, " a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited" as described in the stage directions. She later changes from this to have a far greater understanding of what's actually going on ae starts to take responsibility for the things she’s done, therefore making her not quite as pleased with life as she as previously.

Shelia is the second person The Inspector interrogates and as soon as she first hears about the death of Eva Smith her reaction is the only one of it’s sort that we see throughout the entire play. She is immediately distressed by the new of the suicide, an example of this is when she says “It’s just I can’t help thinking about this girl”. From this we see that it’s something that plays on her mind from the word go, but she never for a second thinks that she could have had any involvement with the girl, until The Inspector starts with her.

As soon as it’s mentioned that Eva got taken on at ‘Milwards’, after being fired from 'Birling & Company’, Shelia begins to ask more questions about Eva as she starts to realize her own personal connection to her, she also becomes agitated and relatively on edge when coming to her revelation.

Her and Eric are only ones who, in the end, feel any responsibility for Eva’s death, or for what they did do whoever they did it to. Whereas their parents show a very upper class attitude of 'every man for himself’.

In the end Shelia ends up taking on a lot more of the blame than she should, and with this we get to see how guilty Shelia actually feels about what she’s done, so guilty that she thinks herself to be one of the prime reasons for Eva’s death, even though it is clear that she is far from being the biggest contributor to what drove Eva to do what she did.

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Arthur Birling

Arthur Birling (AB) is an upper-class gentleman who has an arrogant demeanor but is oddly optimistic, an example of his optimism is when he says “- and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable.” What Priestley is doing here is he’s using dramatic irony, because the audience already knows that the Titanic sunk it’s ironic how AB speaks of it in this way.

AB is the first person that The Inspector interrogates and he is quick to try and remove any responsibility he may have had for the death of Eva Smith. He starts talking to The Inspector in a very confident and casual manner, almost as if he and The Inspector are old friends, but as we all know AB was simply trying to butter The Inspector up because of his apparent place with the police force.

This is just one example of how AB will try to do anything in his power to keep himself safe, he also demonstrates this attitude later on in the play by saying “a man has to make his own way - has to look after himself”.

Even at the end of the play, after The Inspector has revealed everyone’s connections to Eva Smith, AB still tries to play it off as it the entire blame falls on everyone else besides himself. We see him in his true colours right at the end of the play when it comes to light that The Inspector was never actually a real inspector and AB then starts to celebrate because he now knows that there won’t be any public scandal and the police will never know of his, or his family’s, involvement in the death of Eva Smith (if there was any Eva Smith, to begin with, that is).

What AB never even thinks about is that everything that The Inspector said did actually happen, whether or not it ended in a suicide or not, it all happened. At this point Shelia and Eric both feel guilty for what they’ve done but neither AB or Sybil Birling show any sign of remorse for their wrongdoing. It almost seems as if neither of them can make the connection to what they did and the people it effected now that there isn’t a death involved.​​​​​​​