The Role of the Inspector in An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley

The Role of the Inspector in An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley

"An Inspector Calls" was written in 1944 by J.B Priestley, it takes us

into the comfortable and complacent world of the Birling family who

are disturbed during a celebration by the arrival of a mysterious

police inspector. The lighting of the room changes from 'pink and

intimate' to bright and hard when the inspector arrives to show that

this is serious and so the characters movements and reactions are

clearly seen by the audience. A young girl has committed suicide and

it is revealed how all members of one family contributed to it. "An

Inspector Calls" resorts to the ripping off of masks that we human

beings frequently wear, with the Inspector persistently pursuing the

truth. Just when the audience is tiring of discoveries, the whole

action is given a violent twist and everyone is caught up in the

unfolding events. When each member of the Birling family find out that

they contributed to the death of Eva Smith, they react in very

different ways and learn different things from the experience.

The inspector is confident man who is not afraid of anybody even

though he is aware of their status, he speaks cautiously and

appropriately with a disturbing habit of staring hard at the person he

talks with. He is a man who has come to the Birling's house to do his

duty which is to find out how the family helped to drive the girl Eva

Smith to killing herself. He treats each character differently

according to the way they behave towards him. The inspector begins by

shocking the Birling family, '…young women died in the infirmary.' He

does this to get the family listening. He tal...

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...n in the future and anything could happen. Furthermore

there still is that message for audiences today, thus making the play

inimitable.

The inspector in the play isn't real, as we find out at the end, the

inspector could be many things but I think he was a supposed to be a

ghost or each characters conscience. My reasons for this are because

his surname is Goole, which sounds very similar to ghoul which is a

ghost and that every character felt bad because of what they did and

the inspector was that feeling by being their guilty conscience, this

is why in the play the inspector consistently intimidates each person

to make them see the consequences of their actions. Priestley has very

thoughtfully made the inspector mysterious to sustain our interest in

the play and made each character uniquely carry his message to us.