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The Role Of The Inspector In J. B Priestley's An Inspector Calls

1329 Words6 Pages

‘An Inspector Calls’ was a play written in 1945 but set in 1912 as J.B Priestly knew about the past history. This shows that by setting in the past, J.B Priestley is able to use dramatic irony as the audience knows the previous events in the play before the actual characters do and Priestley wants us to be aware of that. During that time much of upper class society was capitalism and there were very strong distinctions between upper and lower class people. The agriculture and industries were privately owned and wealth wasn’t shared among society. The play is set around the Birling family and Arthur Birling is a wealthy factory owner who is seen as the dominant character with all the responsibility in the family as his wealth showed a clear separation in the classes of society. Socialism was on the rise …show more content…

J.B Priestly presents this development as a person when she says "But these girls aren 't cheap labour - they 're people." She shows much remorse and guilt on hearing about the girl’s treatment showing that she is a caring woman. Mr and Mrs Birling have been seen as arrogant but Sheila is contrasted to show compassion and kindness towards the conditions of the workers immediately when she hears about her father 's treatment of Eva Smith. This shows that Sheila is quickly changing her personality during the play compared to at the start she was seen as an irresponsible and not mature. This has a huge impact on the audience because in the early 20th century there was going to be a war in two years which would have caused a high surge in labor jobs as the men would’ve been sent to war. This shows that Priestly makes the individuals seek power rather than caring about others

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