An Inspector Calls is a parable on the responsibility of the individual toward ones

fellow beings, and it succeeds in spite of its heavy-handed sermonizing. Arthur Birling
and his family are celebrating their daughter Sheilas engagement to Gerald Croft.
This will also merge two corporate competitors, resulting in higher profits. Priestley
relies on the audiences knowledge of recent events to color Birlings optimism with
irony as he extols the wonders of the Titanic, which is about to set sail into a world
that will avoid war. These ironies also foreshadow the impending disaster about to
strike the Birlings when Inspector Goole unexpectedly arrives. True to his name, the
inspector resembles a ghoul as he glares at the family, relentlessly repeating his
message that a young woman has killed herself by drinking disinfectant.
The details of the womans hideous and painful death are described repeatedly as
Goole methodically reveals how each member of this respectable family was partly
responsible for her untimely death. Birling fired her for requesting a small raise. In a
spoiled rage, Sheila Birling insisted she be fired from her next job. After Croft had an
affair with the girl, she picked up with a wild young man who left her alone and
pregnant. Mrs. Birling used her influence to deny the girl charity, contending that the
unknown father should be found. The drunken father is her own son, Eric. The
inspector condemns them all for their part in this tragic suicide.
It is the unexpected twist at the end that makes the play palatable in spite of its
obvious structure, stereotyped characters, and heavy-handed lecturing. After the
inspector leaves, Priestley adds dimension and substance to the play. The family first
rationalizes and then questions the legitimacy of the so-called inspector. Phone calls
prove that there is no Inspector Goole and that there has been no suicide. It has all
been a joke. As the family returns to normal, forgetting their terrifying lessons, the
phone rings: A woman has just killed herself by drinking disinfectant and an inspector
is on his way to question them. Priestleys fluid use of time leaves the audience
gasping.
Priestleys theme of the individuals responsibility to society is obvious. The plays
historical references are not enough, however, to manifest the intended allegorical

level of the play as the history of twentieth century England. An Inspector

Calls succeeds as suspense drama, but not as an allegory of how no one is blameless.
Themes.
The play has, perhaps, three main themes. First, it points to the need for each human
being to accept his or her moral responsibility for the welfare of others, especially of
those who are less privileged. Second, it explores the various kinds of evasion of
which humans are capablethrough indifference or rationalizationwhen they try to
avoid this responsibility. Finally, it shows through a conflict of generations that young
people are at least more conscious than their elders of the importance of altruistic
belief and behavior.
These themes find their focal point in the character of the inspector. Goole, as the
instigator of the action, constantly endeavors to remind the Birlings and Gerald of
their complicity in a young womans sad life and death. More like an inquisitor of
souls than a police officer conducting a routine examination, his questioning leads the
audience to see how snobbishness, spite, and prejudice blind people such as the older
Birlings to the wrongs in their society. The parents moral obtuseness is countered by
a sense of guilt and an openness to correction in the hearts of their children. Thus,
Priestley dramatizes both the failure and the hope of the empathic imagination.
This said, it must be stated that the weakest character in the play is the one never seen
in the flesh: Eva Smith. She remains an abstraction, more sinned against than sinning,
certainly; yet surely she bears some fault for her own destruction, a fault that is never
shown convincingly. Nevertheless, it is on what Eva represents that the symbolic
meaning of the play depends, for only if humankind overcomes its egotism can
society become a genuine community of shared values, respect, and love.

Character and Charactiristics.

Inspector Goole
Inspector Goole, a mysterious figure for social justice who claims to represent the
police. A massive, solid, purposeful man of approximately fifty, he calls on the Birling
family as Arthur and Sybil Birling celebrate their daughter Sheilas engagement to
Gerald Croft. Goole says that he is investigating the reasons for the suicide of a
woman variously known as Eva Smith, Daisy Renton, and Mrs. Birling, who has died
in agony after drinking disinfectant. Goole relentlessly reveals the role that each
Birling (and Croft) has played through social or sexual irresponsibility. After Goole
leaves, Arthur calls the chief constable and learns that no such inspector is on the
force, but, as the final curtain falls, the telephone rings and Arthur hears that a woman
has just died after drinking disinfectant and that an inspector is on his way to ask some
questions.
Arthur Birling
Arthur Birling, a self-satisfied industrialist of about fifty. Heavyset, easy-mannered,
and provincial in speech, Arthur, as the play opens, shrugs off the importance of labor
unrest and the rumors of a coming war to forecast a rosy future for those of his class.
He boasts of progress, of airplanes, of automobiles, and even of such unsinkable ships
as theTitanic, slated to sail the next week. He confides to Gerald that he expects a
knighthood, and he lectures his family members on their duties to themselves, not to
the larger community. Shortly after this speech, Goole arrives and reveals that the
dead woman was started on her road to death when she was dismissed by Birling for
being the ringleader of a group who struck for minimally higher wages. Birling
maintains that his attitude was correct, disclaims responsibility, threatens Goole with
the wrath of the chief constable, and berates him for upsetting the family.
Sheila Birling
Sheila Birling, Arthurs daughter, a pretty woman in her twenties. Although engaged
to Gerald, she wonders why he ignored her the previous spring and summer. Shown a

picture of Eva by Goole, she is horrified to realize that she herself had Eva fired from
a sales position that Eva obtained after being dismissed by Arthur. In a bad mood,
envious of Evas looks, she had threatened to close the family account at the shop
unless Eva was dismissed. Unlike her parents, Sheila is lastingly changed by Gooles
revelations of the social injustices perpetrated by her family.
Gerald Croft
Gerald Croft, a well-bred man-about-town, approximately thirty years old. The son of
a titled rival of Birling, Gerald is happy to unite the firms futures; the previous year,
ignoring Sheila, he was living with Eva, whom he knew as Daisy Renton. He met her
at a favorite haunt of prostitutes. Daisy was young, kind, lonely, destitute, and grateful
to live for a time as Geralds mistress. She uncomplainingly accepted the end of the
affair. Gerald gave her money to last out the year and thought no more of her future
until shown a picture by Goole.
Sybil Birling
Sybil Birling, the fiftyish wife of Arthur and the mother of Sheila and Eric. Cold,
haughty, and conscious of her social superiority to her husband, Sybil regards interest
in Evas problems as a symptom of morbidity. She denies concern and responsibility,
even when Goole tells her that, as chairwoman of a charitable organization, she
herself had denied one of Evas final appeals for aid. Eva, who had become pregnant,
assumed the name Birling; Sybil was offended by that and by the womans attitude.
Rather than grant help, Sybil insisted that Eva should make an example of the babys
father, who should be forced to confess in public. Eva would not accept help from the
man, claiming that he was young, foolish, and a heavy drinker who, unknown to her,
had helped Eva by stealing money. Now Sybil learns, and denies, that the young man
is her son Eric.
Eric Birling
Eric Birling, an immature, heavy-drinking young man in his early twenties. While
drunk, Eric picked up Eva, herself hungry, a bit drunk, and down on her luck. He stole

money from his fathers office to help her until Eva learned of the theft and refused
any further aid of that sort. He did not confide in his parents because, with good
reason, he doubted that they would understand. Like Sheila, he is profoundly affected
by Inspector Gooles revelations of the shared responsibility for Evas death.
By the time J. B. Priestley wrote An Inspector Calls, he was midway through a
highly successful and amazingly prolific career as a playwright. His total
output numbered some fifty plays; he also produced scores of novels, essays,
biographies, editions, and pieces of journalism. Because so much of his
writing was associated with British society, he was sometimes derided as a
professional Englishman who wrote too much and too thinly about too many
subjects. In any case, he was a devoted man of letters and was granted the
rare honor in 1977 of membership in Britains Order of Merit, for his services
to literature.
An Inspector Calls is often compared with some of his earlier dramas, such
as Eden End (pr., pb. 1934), also a play about a family facing social change in
Edwardian England in 1912. Other plays, notably Time and the Conways (pr.,
pb. 1937), reveal Priestleys enthusiasm for the idea of time as a dimension of
space, a concept popularized by H. G. Wells in his science-fiction novella The
Time Machine (1895). Some of this interest in foreshadowing events through
precognition is central to the plot of An Inspector Calls.