An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley

An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley

An Inspector Calls takes place in the evening in spring, 1912, in

Brumley. Brumley is an industrial city in the North Midlands.

Priestley wrote the play in 1945 very soon after World War 2 had

finished.

In the play, the inspector wants to teach the Birlings’ to care for

other people and not only themselves, and to help them. He wants to

show the Birlings’ that class and money are not important objects

One of Priestley’s main concerns was that, even if the war is over

people are still in poverty and leading awful miserable lives.

Priestley tries to tell people that they should not celebrate so much

after this terrible war, as millions of people have lost their lives

fighting. He has set the play in 1912 to show how terrible people have

acted before the war and that there should be a dramatic change to the

way people lead their lives. Priestley conveys that there should not

be border between people of different classes, and that people are

equal no matter what class they are, and sometimes upper class people

are worst than lower class.

The genre of “An Inspector Calls” is a thriller and belongs to drama

genre of acting.

Very early on in the beginning of act 1 Birling begins to talk about

how perfect the World is and that there will be no World War and all

the countries are peaceful, and that the titanic will never crash.

Page 6 Birling: “I say there isn’t a chance of war. The world’s

developing so fast that it’ll make war impossible”. This is heavy use

of dramatic irony, as the world experiences the biggest war it has