An Inspector Calls Essay

‘An Inspector Calls’ by J.B Priestley is a play which tackles the theme of social responsibility. This theme is important to our generation in the sense that most of us don’t want to take any responsibility when they are wrong. Priestley shows that it is only the younger generation who are able to take the responsibility of Eva’s death and this is shown towards the end of the play.

The setting is one of the ways in which Priestly introduces this theme. It is set in the past before the First World War. It is about a family who all play a part in a girl committing suicide, although they are unaware that they played any part in the girl’s death. He effectively shows us that throughout the play the characters start to change their personalities. Birling & Sheila are very much the opposite of each other in their attitudes towards this girl’s death. Inspector Goole comes to question the family about the part each member played in the girl’s death. Sheila feels that she is responsible for this but she and Eric seem to be the only members of the family who are able to take responsibility as Birling is too concerned about his reputation. In the end we find out that all members of the family had a part to play in the girl’s death and each member has a different reaction to this. Inspector Goole came in to question the family and knew what he was talking about, he knew somehow that each member of the Birling family had a part to play.

At the start of the play Sheila is shown to be happy as she is celebrating her engagement. Priestley skilfully shows that the theme in the early parts of the play is about social responsibility.:

“ … a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited.”

He shows that she is looking forward to the future with her engagement. However, over the course of the play, Goole’s questioning reveal the suffering of those who work for her father. Sheila is happy because she comes from a wealthy family.

However, Sheila’s sense of well being is shattered by the arrival of Goole. Her reaction to his questioning her telling. This is the point in the play where the theme of social responsibility really is shown. Sheila is shown to be jealous and vindictive by lying and getting Eva sacked for no reason. She realises that she did have a part o play in the many reasons why Eva Smith
committed suicide:

“If I could help her now, I would.”

By using ‘if’ Priestley shows that Sheila knows she was in the wrong and wishes that she hadn’t done what she did. Sheila clearly abused her power as she came from a rich family which was well-known in the area, but she does accept that she was partly responsible for this girl’s death and realises that she has a part to play in other peoples lives. If she does something out of spite there can be consequences for those people she hardly knows.

Again Sheila knows that she had a massive part to play in Eva’s death. She also recognizes that her father ‘Mr Birling’ had a massive part to play. He owns a successful business and Eva Smith worked there. The woman went on strike as they felt they weren’t getting paid enough money for doing a good job. Sheila feels her dad should take responsibility aswell as her as he decided that he wasn’t going to give the woman a pay rise, he decided to just sack Eva instead. Sheila was appalled at her father’s treatment of the workers and in particular Eva Smith. The playwright uses sentence structure to show effectively what Sheila feels of her dads decision; she is shown again to have a change in personality as she thinks these girls should have been treated better:

“But these girl’s aren’t cheap labour – they’re people.”

Priestley shows the change in Sheila again. She was a happy girl at the start of the evening now she is really feeling her family are responsible for Eva’s death and thinks that her father should stand up and take some of the responsibility, but he’s isn’t capable of doing this. He is selfish and doesn’t see anything wrong with what he has done. Sheila is ashamed to hear what her father did to this girl.

In contrast to Sheila, Mr Birling is pompous and self-centred. Mr Birling only wants one thing and that is for him to be knighted by the Queen. He feels any involvement in such a tragic thing would threaten his chances of getting a knighthood. He is unconcerned about how he treats his workers and only seems to care about himself. He thinks that he is better than others because he owns the company. He wants to get higher in life and get respected for his work. He thinks he’s the ‘man’ but he isn’t and Priestley shows this when he describes his reaction to being accused of having some responsibility in the girl’s death:

“Haven’t I already said there’ll be a public scandal … and who here will suffer from that more than I will?”

Here Priestley shows Birling to be pompous and to be a man who only cares about himself and no-one else. Clearly Birling doesn’t want any responsibility to fall on him as it will maybe threaten his chances of a knighthood. He doesn’t want anybody to know that he had a part to play. Priestley uses sentence structure and word choice here to show Birling’s selfishness. ‘I’ shows he is only thinking about himself not even the family. He wasn’t thinking of anyone else people like Eva Smith when he played a selfish part in her death. He is unable to take responsibility and by only talking about himself Priestley shows us this effectively.

Despite Birling not taking any responsibility Sheila knows her father is in the wrong; and when Inspector Goole leaves the house Sheila shows that she wants the whole family to take some responsibility; she knows they are all in the wrong. But most of all the fact that it was herself and her father that were mostly responsible for Eva being sacked from both jobs; and all other events that lead on from that. Sheila’s reaction has changed over the course of the play and it just shows the difference between her and her father as they were the same at the start but now it’s only the younger generation of the family who wants to take responsibility. Sheila’s personality changed through the play and this is a good use of characterisation to show her change and to show how she feels about the family’s unwillingness to accept responsibility.

I would therefore argue that this is an important play for my generation because it shows that you can take responsibility even when the older generation refuse to. At the end of Act 2 she says to her family:

“Between us we drove that girl to commit suicide.”

This shows that her character is strong enough to deal with this but Birling and the older generation are unable to accept that they are partly responsible. Unlike her father she now knows the consequences of her actions and will now think of others before speaking or doing anything that affects others. Priestley uses characterisation to show that Sheila is able to take some of the responsibility unlike her father but shows that her character is strong enough to get over it and move on. She didn’t literally kill Eva Smith but her actions put her well on Eva way to killing herself.

The play has an ironic ending in that the audience learns that there is no Inspector Goole on the police force. They also learn that ‘Eva Smith’ may not have been one girl but five different girls that each member of the family mistreated in a different way, it shows that each girl was treated disgracefully by the powerful and irresponsible Birlings.

In conclusion, in ‘An Inspector Calls’ by J.B Priestley, the playwright shows that Sheila and Eric are the only members of the family which take responsibility which shows that the younger generation are willing to accept responsibility unlike the older generation who are not. Sheila is the most admirable character in the play and Priestley shows us that her character is the strongest of all five. She shows jealousy to get Eva fired but she knows that she was wrong to do what she did. Birling on the other hand knows he did wrong but doesn’t want to admit it; he just cares about himself and his reputation. He wants a knighthood and will do whatever it takes to be recognized in the business world. This is a very effective play as it encourages the reader to get involved, become on of the characters and take the same responsibility. The theme concerned is important to our generation as it looks at taking responsibility, something that not a lot of people do in the present day. Most of us nowadays will try to put the blame on others; but this play shows that we should all take responsibility for our own actions.