🔔 An Inspector Calls

Plot & structure

The play opens in 1912, as the Birling family celebrate Sheila's engagement to Gerald Croft at their home in Brumley. Arthur Birling gives a confident after-dinner speech praising self-reliance and progress, and this celebration is interrupted by the arrival of Inspector Goole, who has come to investigate a young woman's suicide.

The Inspector questions each member of the family in turn, showing them a photograph of the dead girl and revealing facts only when he needs to. This method stops the family from agreeing on a shared story and builds suspense, as it gradually emerges that everyone in the room played a part in her death: Birling had sacked her for organising a pay strike, Sheila had her sacked from a shop called Milwards out of jealousy, Gerald and then Eric each became involved with her in turn, and Mrs Birling refused her a final request for charity shortly before she died.

Near the end of the play, Gerald discovers that no Inspector Goole exists on the local police force, and a telephone call to the infirmary confirms that no suicide has been reported there. Mr and Mrs Birling conclude that the whole evening was a hoax and that they are no longer in any danger.

Structure

Just as the family begin to relax, the telephone rings again: a real police inspector is on his way to ask them about a girl who has just died after swallowing disinfectant. This cyclical structure, in which the ending returns to the situation of the opening, suggests that the lesson has not really been learned, and that the same events are about to happen all over again.

Characters

Priestley uses each character's reaction to the Inspector to explore where responsibility really lies.

Themes

Social responsibility

Priestley uses the Inspector to argue that everyone is responsible for each other, not just for themselves, which is the opposite of Mr Birling's belief that a man should mind only his own business. Ignoring this lesson, the Inspector warns, will bring people to learn it instead in "fire and blood and anguish".

Class and exploitation

The play shows the wealthy exploiting the working class for profit, through low wages at Birling's factory, easy dismissal from a shop like Milwards, and a charity that judges who deserves help. Priestley contrasts the Birling family's comfortable position, built on old and new money, with Eva Smith's complete lack of power.

Gender

Eva Smith has almost no power as a working-class woman with no money or family name to protect her. Gerald and Eric face very little judgement for their part in her story, while she alone is blamed and denied help, revealing an unfair double standard applied to women.

Generations and guilt

Sheila and Eric accept their guilt and want to change, while Mr and Mrs Birling refuse to learn anything and want everything to stay exactly as it was. Priestley uses this contrast between the younger and older generations to suggest that hope for a fairer future depends on the young.

This difference matters most once the family learns the truth about Inspector Goole. Sheila and Eric still accept responsibility regardless of who he really was, but Mr and Mrs Birling, and at first Gerald too, treat the possibility of a hoax as an excuse to escape their guilt completely.

Context & Priestley's methods

Context: 1912 and 1945

Priestley wrote the play just after the Second World War but set it in 1912, more than thirty years earlier. This gap lets Mr Birling make several confident predictions that the audience already knows are wrong, a technique called dramatic irony, which undermines his authority and judgement from the very start of the play.

His most famous mistakes are to call the Titanic "unsinkable" and to insist that there will be no war. Both claims are proved disastrously wrong within only a few years, so the audience of 1945 immediately distrusts his other opinions too, including his views on social responsibility.

Context: Priestley's politics

Priestley was a committed socialist who wanted a fairer, more collectively responsible society. The play was first staged in 1945, just as Clement Attlee's Labour government began building the welfare state, so its message chimed closely with the political mood of the time.

Priestley's methods: dramatic form

The play borrows the tightly-plotted structure of a recognisable genre known as the well-made play, yet Inspector Goole also works as a morality-play figure: a mouthpiece who judges each character in turn and delivers Priestley's own socialist message directly to the audience.

Priestley's methods: lighting and cliffhangers

The lighting on stage begins warm and soft during the family's celebration, then turns harsh and more revealing once the Inspector arrives, symbolising comfortable self-deception giving way to uncomfortable truth. Each act also ends on a cliffhanger revelation, which keeps the tension high and reinforces the play's cyclical structure.