Theme of Responsibility in an Inspector Calls

Visit of Inspector Goole. But who is Inspector Goole? And who is the girl whose suicide he is apparently investigating?
Priestley deliberately set his play in 1912 because the date represented an era when all was very different from the time he was writing. In 1912, rigid class and gender boundaries seemed to ensure that nothing would change. Yet by 1945, most of those class and gender divisions had been breached. Priestley wanted to make the most of these changes. Through this play, he encourages people to seize the opportunity the end of the war had given them to build a better, more caring society.

Political views
During the 1930’s Priestley became very concerned about the consequences of social inequality in Britain, and in 1942 Priestley and others set up a new political party, the Common Wealth Party, which argued for public ownership of land, greater democracy, and a new ‘morality’ in politics. The party merged with the Labour Party in 1945, but Priestley was influential in developing the idea of the Welfare State which began to be put into place at the end of the war. He believed that further world wars could only be avoided through cooperation and mutual respect between countries, and so became active in the early movement for a United Nations. And as the nuclear arms race between West and East began in the 1950s, he helped to found CND, hoping that Britain would set an example to the world by a moral act of nuclear disarmament. Mr Arthur Birling Arthur Birling

• He is described at the start as a “heavy-looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties but rather provincial in his speech.” • He has worked his way up in the world and is proud of his achievements. He boasts about having been Mayor and tries (and fails) to impress the Inspector with his local standing and his influential friends. • However, he is aware of people who are his social superiors, which is why he shows off about the port to Gerald, “it’s exactly the same port your father gets.” He is proud that he is likely to be knighted, as that would move him even higher in social circles.

• He claims the party “is one of the happiest nights of my life.” This is not only because Sheila will be happy, but because a merger with Crofts Limited will be good for his business.
• He is optimistic for the future and confident that there will not be a war. As the audience knows there will be a war, we begin to doubt Mr Birling’s judgement. (If he is wrong about the war, what else will he be wrong about?)

• He is extremely selfish:
o He wants to protect himself and his family. He believes that socialist ideas that stress the importance of the community are “nonsense” and that “a man has to make his own way.”
o He wants to protect Birling and Co. He cannot see that he did anything wrong when he fired Eva Smith – he was just looking after his business interests.
o He wants to protect his reputation. As the Inspector’s investigations continue, his selfishness gets the better of him: he is worried about how the press will view the story in Act II, and accuses Sheila of disloyalty at the start of Act III. He wants to hide the fact that Eric stole money: “I’ve got to cover this up as soon as I can.”

• At the end of the play, he knows he has lost the chance of his knighthood, his reputation in Brumley and the chance of Birling and Co. merging with their rivals. Yet he hasn’t learnt the lesson of the play: he is unable to admit his responsibility for his part in Eva’s death. Mrs Sybil Birling

Mrs Sybil Birling
• She is described at the start as “about fifty, a rather cold woman and her husband’s social superior.”
• She is a snob, very aware of the differences between social classes. She is irritated when Mr Birling makes the social gaffe of praising the cook in front of Gerald and later is very dismissive of Eva, saying “Girls of that class.” • She has the least respect for the Inspector of all the characters. She tries – unsuccessfully – to intimidate him and force him to leave, then lies to him when she claims that she does not recognise the photograph that he shows her.

• She sees Sheila and Eric still as “children” and speaks patronisingly to them. • She tries to deny things that she doesn’t want to believe: Eric’s drinking, Gerald’s affair with Eva, and the fact that a working class girl would refuse money even if it was stolen, claiming “She was giving herself ridiculous airs.” • She admits she was “prejudiced” against the girl who applied to her committee for help and saw it as her “duty” to refuse to help her. Her narrow sense of morality dictates that the father of a child should be responsible for its welfare, regardless of circumstances.

• At the end of the play, she has had to come to terms that her son is a heavy drinker who got a girl pregnant and stole money to support her, her daughter will not marry a good social ‘catch’ and that her own reputation within the town will be sullied. Yet, like her husband, she refuses to believe that she did anything wrong and doesn’t accept responsibility for her part in Eva’s death. Sheila Birling Sheila Birling

• She is described at the start as “a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited.”
• Even though she seems very playful at the opening, we know that she has had suspicions about Gerald when she mentions “last summer, when you never came near me.” Does this suggest that she is not as naive and shallow as she first appears?

• Although she has probably never in her life before considered the conditions of the workers, she shows her compassion immediately she hears of her father’s treatment of Eva Smith: “But these girls aren’t cheap labour – they’re people.” Already, she is starting to change.

• She is horrified by her own part in Eva’s story. She feels full of guilt for her jealous actions and blames herself as “really responsible.” • She is very perceptive: she realises that Gerald knew Daisy Renton from his reaction, the moment the Inspector mentioned her name. At the end of Act II, she is the first to realise Eric’s part in the story. Significantly, she is the first to wonder who the Inspector really is, saying to him, ‘wonderingly’, “I don’t understand about you.” She warns the others “he’s giving us the rope – so that we’ll hang ourselves” (Act II) and, near the end, is the first to consider whether the Inspector may not be real.

• She is curious. She genuinely wants to know about Gerald’s part in the story. It’s interesting that she is not angry with him when she hears about the affair: she says that she respects his honesty. She is becoming more mature.

• She is angry with her parents in Act 3 for trying to “pretend that nothing much has happened.” Sheila says “It frightens me the way you talk:” she cannot understand how they cannot have learnt from the evening in the same way that she has. She is seeing her parents in a new, unfavourable light. • At the end of the play, Sheila is much wiser. She can now judge her parents and Gerald from a new perspective, but the greatest change has been in herself: her social conscience has been awakened and she is aware of her responsibilities. The Sheila who had a girl dismissed from her job for a trivial reason has vanished forever.

Eric Birling
Eric Birling
• He is described at the start as “in his early twenties, not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive.”
• Eric seems embarrassed and awkward right from the start. The fist mention of him in the script is “Eric suddenly guffaws,” and then he is unable to explain his laughter, as if he is nervous about something. (It is not until the final act that we realise this must be because of his having stolen some money.) There is another awkward moment when Gerald, Birling and Eric are chatting about women’s love of clothes before the Inspector arrives. Do you feel that there is tension in Eric’s relationship with his father? • It soon becomes clear to us (although it takes his parents longer) that he is a hardened drinker. Gerald admits, “I have gathered that he does drink pretty hard.”

• When he hears how his father sacked Eva Smith, he supports the worker’s cause, like Sheila. “Why shouldn’t they try for higher wages?” • He feels guilt and frustration with himself over his relationship with the girl. He cries, “Oh – my God! – how stupid it all is!” as he tells his story. He is horrified that his thoughtless actions had such consequences. • He had some innate sense of responsibility, though, because although he got a woman pregnant, he was concerned enough to give her money. He was obviously less worried about stealing (or ‘borrowing’ from his father’s office) than he was about the girl’s future. So, was Eric, initially, the most socially aware member of the Birling family?

• He is appalled by his parents’ inability to admit their own responsibility. He tells them forcefully, “I’m ashamed of you.” When Birling tries to threaten him in Act III, Eric is aggressive in return: “I don’t give a damn now.” Do you think Eric has ever stood up to his father in this way before? • At the end of the play, like Sheila, he is fully aware of his social responsibility. He is not interested in his parents’ efforts to cover everything up: as far as he is concerned, the important thing is that a girl is dead. “We did her in all right.”

Gerald Croft
Gerald Croft
• He is described as “an attractive chap about thirty, rather too manly to be a dandy but very much the easy well-bred man-about-town.”
• He is an aristocrat – the son of Lord and Lady Croft. We realise that they are not over-impressed by Gerald’s engagement to Sheila because they declined the invitation to the dinner.
• He is not as willing as Sheila to admit his part in the girl’s death to the Inspector and initially pretends that he never knew her. Is he a bit like Mr Birling, wanting to protect his own interests?

• He did have some genuine feeling for Daisy Renton, however: he is very moved when he hears of her death. He tells Inspector Goole that he arranged for her to live in his friend’s flat “because I was sorry for her;” she became his mistress because “She was young and pretty and warmhearted – and intensely grateful.” • Despite this, in Act 3 he tries to come up with as much evidence as possible to prove that the Inspector is a fake – because that would get him off the hook. It is Gerald who confirms that the local force has no officer by the name of Goole, he who realises it may not have been the same girl and he who finds out from the infirmary that there has not been a suicide case in months. He seems to throw his energies into “protecting” himself rather than “changing” himself (unlike Sheila).

• At the end of the play, he has not changed. He has not gained a new sense of social responsibility, which is why Sheila (who has) is unsure whether to take back the engagement ring.
Inspector Goole
Inspector Goole
• He is described on his entrance as creating “an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness. He is a man in his fifties, dressed in a plain darkish suit. He speaks carefully, weightily, and has a disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses before actually speaking. ” • He works very systematically; he likes to deal with “one person and one line of enquiry at a time.” His method is to confront a suspect with a piece of information and then make them talk – or, as Sheila puts it, “he’s giving us the rope – so that we’ll hang ourselves.”

• He is a figure of authority. He deals with each member of the family very firmly and several times we see him “massively taking charge as disputes erupt between them.” He is not impressed when he hears about Mr Birling’s influential friends and he cuts through Mrs Birling’s obstructiveness. • He seems to know and understand an extraordinary amount: • He knows the history of Eva Smith and the Birlings’ involvement in it, even though she died only hours ago. Sheila tells Gerald, “Of course he knows.” • He knows things are going to happen – He says “I’m waiting…To do my duty” just before Eric’s return, as if he expected Eric to reappear at exactly that moment • He is obviously in a great hurry towards the end of the play: he stresses “I haven’t much time.” Does he know that the real inspector is shortly going to arrive?

• His final speech is like a sermon or a politician’s. He leaves the family with the message “We are responsible for each other” and warns them of the “fire and blood and anguish” that will result if they do not pay attention to what he has taught them.

• All this mystery suggests that the Inspector is not a ‘real’ person. So, what is he?
• Is he a ghost? Goole reminds us of ‘ghoul’.
• Is he the voice of Priestley?
• Is he the voice of God?
• Is he the voice of all our consciences?
• Do you have any other suggestions?

Eva Smith
• Of course, we never see Eva Smith on stage in the play: we only have the evidence that the Inspector and the Birlings give us.
• The Inspector, Sheila Gerald and Eric all say that she was “pretty.” Gerald describes her as “very pretty – soft brown hair and big dark eyes.”
• Her parents were dead.
• She came from outside Brumley: Mr Birling speaks of her being “countrybred.” • She was working class.
• The Inspector says that she had kept a sort of diary, which helped him piece together the last two years of her life:
• However, in Act 3 we begin to wonder whether Eva ever really existed. – Gerald says, “We’ve no proof it was the same photograph and therefore no proof it was the same girl.” – Birling adds, “There wasn’t the slightest proof that this Daisy Renton really was Eva Smith.” Yet the final phone call, announcing that a police inspector is shortly to arrive at the Birlings’ house to investigate the suicide of a young girl, makes us realise that maybe Eva Smith did exist after all. What do you think?

• Think about Eva’s name. Eva is similar to Eve, the first woman created by God in the Bible. Smith is the most common English surname. So, Eva Smith could represent every woman of her class.
STAGE DIRECTIONS
In the course of An Inspector Calls the Birling family and Gerald Croft change from a state of great self-satisfaction to a state of extreme self-doubt. The play is in ‘real time’ – in other words, the story lasts exactly as long as the play is on the stage. So, what happens in a comparatively short time to create such a dramatic contrast? How is the drama maintained and the audience involved? Think about these points.

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 (all action happens in the same place). Priestley says that 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. For example, 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 did not attend the engagement dinner. This arouses interest in the audience – we want to find out what is going on!

Dramatic Irony and Tone
There is dramatic irony. For instance, 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 on her maiden voyage. This puts the audience at an advantage over the characters and makes us more involved.

The Birlings’ Living Room
• There is a lot of tension as each member of the family is found to have played a part in Eva’s death. New pieces of information contribute to the story being constructed. The audience is interested in how each character
reacts to the revelations.

• Inspector himself adds drama:
• 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 is in command at the end of Act I and the start of Act 2, and the end of Act 2 and the start of Act 3. He is a brooding, inescapable presence, very much in control.

Tension and Timing
There are numerous changes in tone. For instance, Mr Birling’s confidence is soon replaced – first by self-justification as he tries to explain his part in Eva’s death, and then by anxiety.  Timing of entrances and exits is crucial. For example, 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 Birlings believed themselves to be off the hook when it is 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 is an unexpected final twist.

THEMES
In An Inspector Calls, the central theme is responsibility. Priestley is interested in our personal responsibility for our own actions and our collective responsibility to society. The play explores the effect of class, age and sex on people’s attitudes to responsibility, and shows how prejudice can prevent people from acting responsibly. In addition, the play also considers the following themes of morality and lies and deceit. RESPONSIBILITY

Everyone in society is linked…
The words responsible and responsibility are used by most characters in the play at some point.
Each member of the family has a different attitude to responsibility. Make sure that you know how each of them felt about their responsibility in the case of Eva Smith.  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 are 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 is propounding are like those of Priestley who was a socialist. Remember at the time the ethos was based on the individualism ethos of laissez faire ( leave alone), Priestly wanted the characters to consider a social conscience and to embrace a collective responsibility. He adds a clear warning about what could happen if, like some members of the family, we ignore our responsibility:

And 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. What would Priestley have wanted his audience to think of when the Inspector warns the Birlings of the “fire and blood and anguish”?

Probably he 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

With particular reference to two characters of your choice, discuss how J.B Priestley uses characters to present the theme of responsibility in An Inspector Calls.

The play ‘An Inspector Calls’ is used by J.B. Priestley as a door to open the minds of his 1945 audiences to the faults that he saw in society; the lack of responsibility people felt towards each other. The play is set in 1912 when a quarter of the globe was coloured red, denoting the vast and powerful empire that was Britain. The upper and middle classes led such a lavish life of luxury that the Edwardian era is now infamous for its elegance, ostentation and extravagance. Men such as Arthur Birling, who is portrayed by Priestley as the stereotypical capitalist, thrived in this society. Yet, despite the illusions of security, this was an epoch full of hypocrisy, prejudice and exploitation. There was a huge divide between the upper and lower classes. Many strikes during the 1900s and food shortages created political tension. In contrast to that, the play was written and published in 1945, just after World War II. The people had united to fight one common enemy but the country was once again in disarray. Priestley uses this time difference effectively. He implies that in order to move forward and to rebuild the country the way forward is socialism.

Priestley creates a character to whom the individual can relate and therefore shows us and the Birlings how our ignorance of our responsibilities to people such as Eva Smith, will lead to our demise in “fire, blood and anguish.” The two characters I have chosen to compare maintain two very different attitudes towards their responsibilities; they are Arthur Birling and the Inspector.