The Function of the Inspector in J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls

The Function of the Inspector in J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls

The play 'An Inspector Calls' was set in 1912 in an industrial city in

the North Midlands. In the play Arthur Birling, a prosperous

manufacturer, is holding a dinner party to celebrate the engagement of

his daughter Sheila to Gerald Croft. Arthur Birling is naive about

things like war and he doesn't believe in community and is very

selfish. He only cares about himself and his family, and seems to

think that he can abuse people who are of a lower class than himself.

The party is interrupted when a police inspector, Inspector Goole,

turns up to question members of the family about the suicide of a

young working class woman.

The inspector interrogates them all and, and every member of the

family turns out to have done something terrible to the woman. He

tells the family she had a few identities.

The inspector says that the woman died by drinking a lot of strong

disinfectant. He claims that Arthur Birling upset her when a girl

called Eva Smith worked for him and asked for more money, she was

refused it she went on strike and he ended up firing her. He protests

and says that he was paying her good money and her suicide couldn't

possibly be his fault as it happened almost two years ago.

The function of the inspector at this point of the play is to try and

make Mr Birling feel guilty about his decision to fire the girl.

Birling did not feel any remorse as he is a heartless man. He didn't

care about the girl as he didn't know her; he seems to only care about

people close to him and not about people around him who get hurt by

his decisions and things he does.

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...n the beginning Mr Birling says how much family means to him, and how

he does not believe in community. Later in the play the inspector

manages to make Birling to begin to realise that he should have

respect for people in the community and that what is happening in his

family may not how it seems. He had been seeing everything through

rose tinted glasses and putting his family up on a pedestal. He had

not been recognising things that had been going on under his nose.

He may say that he cares deeply about his family, but not enough to

know them. If cared as much as he said he would have talked to them or

at least noticed changes and things happening.

The inspector tries to show the Birling family the meaning of family

and community and to make a balance, and make more of an effort with

everyone who he meets in life.