An inspector calls

An inspector calls

1. Dramatic effect

   • Setting and subtle hints: The setting and lighting are very important. Priestley describes the scene in detail at the opening of act 1, so that the audience has the immediate impression of a 'heavily comfortable house'. The setting is constant. Priestley says the lighting should be 'pink and intimate' before the inspector arrives - a rose-tinted glow - when it becomes 'brighter and harder'. The lighting reflects the mood of the play. 'The dining room of a fairly large suburban house, belonging to a prosperous manufacturer. It has good solid furniture of the period. At the moment they have all had a good dinner, are celebrating a special occasion, and are pleased with themselves'. There are subtle hints that not is all as it seems. e.g. early on we wonder whether the happy atmosphere is slightly forced. Sheila wonders where Gerald was last summer, Eric is nervous about something, Lord and Lady Croft didn't attend the engagement dinner. This arouses interest in the audience.
     • Dramatic irony and tone: There's dramatic irony. e.g., the audience knows how wrong Mr Birling is when he makes confident predictions about there not being a war and is excited about the sailing of The Titanic: famously, the ship sank of her maiden voyage. This puts the audience at an advantage over the characters and makes us more involved. There's a lot of tension as each member of the family is found to have played a part in Eva's death. New pieces of info contribute to the story being constructed. The audience is interested in how each character reacts to the revelations.
       • The inspector: He controls the pace and tension by dealing with one line of enquiry at a time. Slowly the story of Eva's life is unravelled, like in a 'whodunnit'. He's in command at the end of act I and at the start of act 2, and the end of act 2 and the start of act 3. He's very brooding, inescapable presence, very much in control. He's very mysterious and seems to know what is going to happen before it does.
         • Tension and timing: There are numerous changes in tone. e.g., Mr Birling's confidence is soon replaced - first by self-justification as he tries to explain his part of Eva's death, and then by anxiety. Timing of entrances and exists is crucial. e.g. the inspector arrives immediately after Birling has told Gerald about his impending knighthood and about how 'a man has to look after himself and his own'.
           • The ending: The ending leaves the audience on a cliff hanger. In act 3 the Birling's believed themselves to be off the hook when it's discovered that the inspector wasn't real and that no girl had died in the infirmary. This releases some of the tension - but the final telephone call, announcing that a real inspector is on his way to ask questions about the suicide of a young girl, suddenly restores the tension very dramatically. It's an unexpected final twist,

2. Themes

   • Responsibility: The inspector wanted each member of the family to share the responsibility of Eva's death: he tells them, 'each of you helped to kill her'. However, his final speech is aimed not only at the characters on stage, but at the audience too: 'one Eva Smith has gone - but there millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, and what we think and say and do'. The inspector is talking about a collective responsibility, everyone is society is linked, in the same way that the characters are linked to Eva Smith. Everyone is a part of 'one body', the inspector sees society as more important than individual interests. The views he's propounding are like those of Priestley who was a socialist.
     • He add a clear warning about what could happen if, like some members of the family, we ignore our responsibility: 'an I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, when they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.' Priestley is thinking partly about the world war they had just lived through - the result of governments blindly pursuing 'national interest' at all costs. No doubt he was thinking too about the Russian revolution in which poor workers and peasants took over the state and exacted a bloody revenge against the aristocrats who had treated them so badly.
       • Class: Mr Birling: He's keen to be knighted to cement his hard' fought rise to the upper class. To this character Eva was cheap labour. Sheila: was happy spending a lot of time in expensive shops. To this character Eva was someone who could be fired out of spite. Gerald: prepared to marry Sheila, despite her lower social position. To this character Eva was a mistress who could be discarded at will. Eric: awkward about his 'public-school-and-varsity' life. To this character Eva was easy sex at the end of a drunken night out. Mrs Birling: socially superior to her husband, and embarrassed at his gaffes. To this character Eva was a presumptuous upstart. The palace variety theatre was a music hall. It wasn't seen as quite 'respectable' entertainment - probably not somewhere where Sheila would have gone. The stalls bar of the palace theatre, where Eva met Gerald and Eric, was the bar for the lower classes and a favourite haunt o prostitutes.
         • Priestley is trying to show that the upper classes are unaware that the easy lives they lead the rest upon hard work of the lower classes.
         • Age: The old - The old are set in their ways. They're utterly confident that they're right and they see the young as foolish. The old will do anything to protect themselves: Mrs Birling lies to the inspector when he 1st shows the photograph; Mr Birling wants to cover up a potential scandal. They have never been forced to examine their consciences before and they find they cannot do it now - as the saying goes, 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks'. Mr and Mrs Birling have much to fear from the visit of the 'real' inspect because they know they will lose everything. The young - The young open to new ideas. This is 1st seen early in act 1 when both Eric and Sheila express sympathy for the strikers - an idea which horrifies Birling, who can only think of production costs. The young are hoenst and admit their faults. Eric refuses to try to cover his part up, saying, 'the fact remain that I did what I did'.
           • Sheila and Eric see the human side of Eva's story and very troubled by their part in it. They do examine their consequences. Sheila and Eric nothing to fear from the visit of the 'real' inspector because they have already admitted what they have done wrong, an will change. Gerald is caught in the middle, being neither very young nor old. In the end he sides with the older generation, perhaps because his aristocratic roots influence him to want to keep the status quo and protect his own interests. Ultimately, we can be optimistic that the young - those who will shape future society - are able to take on board the inspector's message.
       • Sex: Because Eva was a woman - in the days before women were valued by society and had not yet been awarded the right to vote - she was in an even worse position than a lower class man. Even upper class women had few choices. For most, the bests they could hope for was to impress a rich man and marry well - which could explain why Sheila spent so long in Milwards. For working class women, a job was crucial. There was no social security at that time, so without a job they had no money. There was very few options open to women in that situation: many saw no alternative but to turn to prostitution. Mr Birling is dismissive of the several hundred women in his factory: 'we were paying the usual artes and if they didn't like those rates, they could go and work somewhere else'. Gerald saw Eva as 'young and fresh and charming' - someone vulnerable he could amuse himself by helping.
         • Mrs Birling couldn't believe that 'a girl of that sort would ever refuse money'. Her charitable committee was a sham: a small amount of money was given to a small amount of women, hardly scratching the surface of the problem.