An Inspector Calls Essay, Research Paper
??????????????????????????????????????????????? ESSAY – AN INSPECTOR CALLSJohn Boynton Priestley was a socialist. He believed
that whether we acknowledged it or not, we are in a community and have a
responsibility to look after others. He wrote "An Inspector Calls" to
highlight these beliefs and share them. In writing this essay, I intend to show
Priestley’s aims in writing the play, how he showed these aims and how
successful he was in conveying his ideas.You can only speculate on the aims of a playwright
in writing a play. In the case of "An Inspector Calls", a valid
speculation would be that the author aimed to educate the audience through the
characters’ realisation of their role in Eva Smith’s demise and thus their
individual responsibility towards other people. ??????????? Arthur
Birling is the kind of character the whole play warns against. "A
hard-headed business man", he believes that society is as it should be.
The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor and there is a large gap between the
two. He believes that "a man has to mind his own business and look after
himself and his own". When put with other things Birling has said in the
play, we see that Priestley’s views do not concur with Birling’s and he has
added statements to make the audience see Birling’s views as false. Birling’s
confidence in the predictions he makes – that the Titanic is "unsinkable,
absolutely unsinkable", that "The Germans don’t want a war. Nobody
wants a war" and that "we’re in for a time of increasing
prosperity" give that audience the impression that his views of community
and shared responsibility are misguided also. Every one of the predictions
Birling makes are wrong; the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage, World War one
broke out two years after the play was set and the American stock market
crashed in 1929, plunging the world into economic chaos. This leads us to
regard him as a man of many words but little sense!??? ??????????? If
we contrast the character of Birling with that of the Inspector, we can see
Priestly’s aims showing. The Inspector is the opposite of Birling. Where? Birling’s predictions are wrong, the
Inspector predicts that if people don’t learn their responsibilities, they will
be taught in "fire and blood and anguish". This prediction refers to
World War I most obviously, but also can refer to World War II. The lessons of
World War I weren’t learnt so the same mistakes were made and another war
started; and though Priestly was unaware of it when the play was written, sixty
years on the same mistakes have caused war after war. This makes his message
just as relevant to the audience of 2001 as to his intended audience. Another
contrast to Birling is that while Birling?
seemingly knows nothing of his family’s affairs, Sheila says of the
Inspector "We hardly ever told him anything he didn’t know". At the end of Act Three,
Birling seems not to have taken any of the lessons of the evening to heart. The
demise of Eva Smith and the part each member of his family played in her death
have not shaken his belief that "a man has to mind his own business and
look after himself and his own?" and that "there’s every excuse for
what? (he and Mrs Birling)? did" In fact, he is more concerned with his
own reputation than with Eva. "?who here will suffer?more than I
will?" He says things that should have been said to him, "you don’t
realise yet all you’ve done…you don’t seem to care about anything", yet
when he says these things, he is of course talking not about Eva Smith, but
about his own reputation and an upcoming public scandal. The attitudes of Mr
and Mrs Birling, and to an extent Gerald, and their willingness to explain away
the? events of the evening to hoaxes and
artfully crafted deception, all go towards the final plot twist – the inspector
is returning to teach the Birlings their lesson again. This ties in with the
idea that if you don’t learn the lesson the first time, you will be taught it
again, through "fire and blood and anguish".The message of the play was
particularly effective to the audiences of 1946. Priestley knew that the
message of his play would reach the war-weary audiences of the era more
effectively than it would reach the audiences of a different time. The
"fire and blood and anguish" reference to the First and Second World
Wars would be very influential to the audience. The setting of the play in 1912
allowed for predictions to be made by both Birling and Inspector Goole. The
intended effect of the predictions was to make the audience see a glimpse of
the kind of person the predictive character is. In the case of Birling, the
audience would see him as a character whose opinion is not to be trusted,
whereas the predictions made by the Inspector chill the audience and make them
see that the lesson he speaks of has been re-taught through fire and blood and
anguish twice already. The audiences had experienced the horrors of war and
were not eager to experience them again, so they may think that if they
followed JB Priestley’s message, they would prevent yet another world war. The play was set in 1912,
and being set at this time, there was not only the opportunity for predictions,
but also for a more drastic look at the relationship between the rich and the
poor. The class gap of 1912 was much larger than that of 1946, and so was more
noticeable to the audiences. With the upper class, we have mentalities like
that of Sybil Birling, who would seem to think that all members of the lower
classes are beneath her and her family. She say to Birling "Arthur, you’re
not supposed to say such things," when he compliments the cook (the cook
being a member of the lower classes). This shows that she believes that the
lower classes are there to serve, not to be thanked or complimented. This is a
strange viewpoint for a "prominent member of the Brumley Women’s Charity
Organisation". With the lower classes however, we have Eva Smith, a young woman
who is shown as the innocent victim of the thoughtless actions of the Birlings.
This contrast is one of many in the play, set up to show one side to be better
than the other. The Inspector against Birling, Eva Smith against Sybil Birling,
Sheila and Eric at the end of the play against Arthur and Sybil, they all show
examples of what Priestley viewed as the Right way against the Wrong way. The
way the latter parties in each contrast I have mentioned act in a way such as
to cause the audience to see them as in the wrong, making the other party
correct. The other parties have views similar to Priestley, so Priestley was
trying to get his message of community and socialism across to the audience
through the actions of the characters.Another of Priestley’s
messages seems to be that there is hope for the future. On seeing how they have
affected Eva Smith, both Sheila and Eric act remorsefully. The character of
Sheila is fairly caring at the beginning of the play, but as events unravel,
and Sheila realises her guilt, her character develops from a fairly naÏve young
girlish character to a more mature, understanding character. This change is so
dramatic that to compare the Sheila who at the end of the play has taken to
heart the Inspectors lessons ("I remember what he said, how he looked, and
what he made me feel. Fire and blood and anguish."), with the Sheila who
had a young girl fired from her job because of her own personal paranoia and
who acted so differently earlier, you would think they were different people.
This is similar to a comparison made between the drunken , playful Eric of Act
1 with the sober serious Eric at the end of Act 3 who has learned that his own
mother played a major role in driving the woman bearing his child to suicide. The results of the
Inspectors visit as regards the younger generation are total metamorphoses of
character. The older generation however don’t see that they have done anything
wrong. Mr and Mrs Birling are all too happy to dismiss the evenings events as
false once the chance appears that the Inspector may not have been a police
Inspector. Their characters stay the same virtually from beginning to end, with
only the short amount of time between Eric’s part in the saga becoming known
and the Inspector showing any waver in their determination that they were
right. The senior Birlings are the examples of the people who will be taught
through "Fire and blood and anguish". This is very different to the
younger generation. "You seem to have made a great impression on this
child Inspector" comments Birling, and is answered with the statement
"We often do on the young ones. They’re more impressionable." This
implies that Priestley is trying to say that there is potential for change in
the "young ones" which is not as evident in the older generation.Priestley’s aims are made
clear by the Inspector largely. As his interactions with the characters go,
Inspector Goole is mysterious. He has a way of making the characters confess to
him, and to themselves, their role in Eva Smiths demise. He links the separate
accounts together to form an approximate biography of Eva Smith from when she
left the employment of Mr Birling up until she commits suicide. Inspector Goole
has another use though – he acts as a social conscience of sorts. He acts as
the voice of Priestley in the play , or the voice of Priestley’s socialist
views. "We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are
responsible for each other." He points out that "we have to share
something. If nothing else, we’ll have to share our guilt," and that
"Public men Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges"
to which Birling replies "?you weren’t asked here to talk to me about my
responsibilities." Contrary to what Arthur Birling believes, it is a very
likely that the Inspector was sent to the Birlings to teach them about
responsibility. The character of Inspector
Goole is mysterious. This air of mystery is intentional. He is mysterious
because of his character. The name Inspector Goole is an obvious pun (Inspector
À spectre, Goole À ghoul). We as an audience never find out who
this Inspector is. There are many possibilities – he could be the ghost of Eva
Smith avenging her death; he could be some form of cosmic balance, keeping
people considerate; he could be amass hallucination brought on by too much
champagne of something in the food. He could be anybody or anything. Priestley
left the character as a mystery so as to have a larger impact on the audience,
making them think more about the play, and helping them think more about the
messages the play brings. Through the Inspector, the audiences are educated in
their social understandings and behaviour, seeing the examples of the Birlings
and hearing Inspector Goole’s prediction. The ending, as I have
already pointed out, symbolises the fact that if you do not learn your lesson
the first time, you will be taught it again and again. It symbolises that you
can’t run from your conscience, as the Birlings will find out. Priestley uses
the dramatic twist of the Inspector returning at the end of the play to
emphasis this point, and makes it more effective by placing it just as the
characters are beginning to relax. It serves to ‘prick’ the consciences of both
the characters and the audience. At the end of reading the
play, I was left feeling as if I would like to think I had learned from the
example of the Birlings and the message it contained. As it is a play though, I
would have liked to see it acted out. The ending is well crafted, leaving an
open ending to add to the dramatic effect, but looking at it differently, there
is not really another way to have ended the play after that plot twist other
than an open ending where it was without ruining the play itself. I think the
majority of people who have seen this play would have liked to think of
themselves as an Eric or a Sheila.The aims of Priestley when
he wrote this play, I believe, was to make us think, to make us question our
own characters and beliefs. He wasted to show us that we can change, and we can
decide which views we side with. He wanted us to ask ourselves if we wanted to
be a Sheila or a Sybil, an Eric or an Arthur. Or, were we in-between like
Gerald. Priestley wanted the audience to learn from the mistakes of the
Birlings. I think that Priestley wanted to make a difference; not a world
changing difference, but a small difference in the way people think. Then, if
you think of every person who coming out of the play gave some money to a
beggar in the street, you would see that?
Priestley did make a difference. It would have changed peoples views on
society, however small those changes would be, and so Priestley achieved his
aims in writing the play.