Eva Smith's Death in Priestley's An Inspector Calls

Eva Smith's Death in Priestley's An Inspector Calls

The play An Inspector Calls, wrote by J.B. Priestley, was written in

1946. An Inspector Calls was set in 1912. Priestley chose this era to

set An Inspector Calls because it was before both wars and most of the

audience would know the history from the past 40 years. This fact

helped Priestley to portray Birling as a pompous businessman who

thinks he knows everything. He describes how the Titanic is

unsinkable, how there will not be war (although in two years WWI

begins), and that by 1940 there will be peace. Birling is extremely

proud that he used to be Lord Mayor and he is hoping that he will get

a knighthood. Birling says to Gerald after dinner, "there's a fair

chance that I might find my into the next honours list. Just a

knighthood, of course." The 'of course' part at the end of the little

speech I think shows Birling would be very disappointed if he didn't

get a knighthood.

J.B. Priestley subverts the detective genre, which was very popular at

the time. When an audience read the book, or sat down to watch the

production, they would immediately think that there was going to be an

ironclad murderer. This was not the case as there would be no real

murderer just people that helped drive Eva Smith to suicide. As the

play progressed the audience probably would have thought more and more

about the way all the characters were involved with the suicide in

some way or other. They may have thought this was stupid or could have

thought that this play, or production, was revolutionary. When they

receive a phone call at the end of the play, saying that an inspector

was on his way and that a girl was on her way to the hospital after

drinking bleach, the audience would have been baffled. I was a bit

disappointed with the ending because you could argue that all the play

was practically irrelevant because when the inspector calls the next