The different concepts seen throughout An inspector calls.

The different concepts seen throughout An inspector calls.

Time is an important factor in an inspector calls. He wrote the play for an audience coming out of the horrors of the Second World War, yet he set his play in 1912, two years before the start of the first world war. At the end of the play we are left with a sense that the events are going to start all over again. We wonder whether things will be different and how the characters will behave. The inspector has a mystical, almost unworldly, quality.

Dunne’s theory states the idea that you could be given the gist of seeing forward in time as well as looking back. This would mean that just as you can look back and see what actions led you to your present situation, you could also look forward to see the consequences of your actions. So if you wish, you could change those actions and so avoid the consequences. An inspector calls explicitly deals with the nature of time in its final twist: has the play. We might wonder, simply gone back in time? Is it all about to happen again? How does the inspector know of the “fire and blood and anguish”. Usually interpreted as a foreshadowing of the first and second world wars?

CLASS

Taking the play from a socialist perspective inevitably focuses on issues of social class. Class is a large factor, indirectly, in the events of the play and Eva smiths’ death. Mrs Birling, priestly notes, is her husband’s social superior, just a Gerald will be Sheila’s if they do get married. Priestly also subtly notes that Gerald’s mother, lady croft, disapproves of Gerald’s marrying Sheila for precisely this reason. Finally, everyone’s treatment of Eva might be put down to the fact that she is a girl, as Mrs Birling puts it, “of that class”. Priestly clearly was interested in the class system and how it determines the decisions that people make.

SOCIAL DUTY

Throughout the play, socialism is a key political concept and the inspector is the epitome of this. In act 3 the inspector says, “We’re all part of one body, we are all responsible for each other”

The use of parallelism here is used as a rhetorical feature, which persuades the birling’s and Gerald it is better to be socialist than a liberalist. The use of strong defiant tone here is used to make a lasting impression on the birling’s, that socialism the right belief to follow. “we do not live alone”, the inspector says in his final speech. This is perhaps the most important, central them of the entire play, that we have a duty to other people, regardless of social status, wealth, class, or anything else. There is, priestly observes, such a thing as society, and he argues that it is important that people be aware of the effects of their actions on others. The birling’s, of course, initially do not think at all about how they might have affected Eva smith, but they are forced to confront their likely responsibility over the course of the play.