An Inspector Calls: An overview

A rich family is celebrating an engagement over dinner when a police inspector rings the doorbell. By the time he leaves, he has shown that every person at that table helped push a young woman towards her death that afternoon. Nothing comes into that dining room except one man and one photograph, and the family comes apart. This video tells that evening in order, and then it shows why the play does not end when the Inspector goes.

The play is set in nineteen twelve, in the dining room of the Birlings, a rich family in a manufacturing town called Brumley. Priestley wrote it in nineteen forty-five, and the video on those two dates explains why that gap matters. Arthur Birling, the father, owns a factory. Tonight he is celebrating because his daughter Sheila is engaged to Gerald Croft, whose father owns an even bigger firm. Sybil Birling, his wife, keeps an eye on everyone's manners. Their son Eric has had a bit too much to drink, and Sheila is quick to tease him about it. Birling is in the mood for speeches. He tells the young men that the new liner, the Titanic, is unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable. And the audience already knows how that voyage ended. Then he hands the young men his rule for life. A man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own. The words are hardly out of his mouth when the doorbell rings, and Edna, the maid, shows in Inspector Goole. Now, the Inspector tells them that a young woman called Eva Smith died in the infirmary this afternoon. She had swallowed disinfectant. He shows Birling a photograph, one person at a time, and Birling knows the face. Two years ago she worked in his factory. She helped lead a strike for higher wages, and Birling sacked her as one of the ringleaders - that is where her trouble starts. The Inspector wants to know whether Birling feels any responsibility for what came after. Does Birling apologise for the sacking, or defend it? He defends it. To Birling the sacking was sound business, and he cannot see why a policeman is asking about it. Sheila hears the story and says what nobody else in her family will say. But these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people. Then the Inspector shows Sheila the photograph, and she runs out of the room. She knows the face too. Sheila comes back and admits it. Eva had found a job in a smart shop called Milwards. Sheila caught the girl smiling while she tried on a dress, took it as mockery, and had her sacked. Then the Inspector mentions that Eva changed her name to Daisy Renton, and Gerald is startled. Sheila sees it. The first act of the play stops right there, on a secret half out. Every act ends like that, on a question left hanging, and that is how Priestley keeps the tension climbing.

Right, the second act starts at the same moment the first one stopped, because the evening never breaks. There is no jump in time and no change of room anywhere in the play. Gerald admits it. Last spring, he met Daisy Renton in a bar, felt sorry for her, and let her live in a friend's flat as his mistress. He ended it at the end of the summer. Sheila hands him back the engagement ring. Gerald goes out for a walk, and the Inspector turns to Mrs Birling. Sybil Birling chairs a committee that gives money to women in need. Two weeks ago, a pregnant girl came to it for help, calling herself Mrs Birling. Sybil turned her down, and she says why without a flicker of doubt. She was giving herself ridiculous airs. Then Sybil tells the Inspector who is really to blame: the young man who got the girl pregnant. She wants him found and made to own it in public. Both young men are out of the house now. Gerald is on his walk, and Eric slipped out while his mother was being questioned. Who is the father of that baby, Gerald or Eric? Eric, her own son. The act ends as he walks back into the room, just after his mother has demanded his punishment.

So the third act starts with Eric's story. He met the same girl in the same bar last autumn, went back to her room drunk, and forced his way in. She became pregnant. Eric stole money from his father's office to help her - and she refused it when she found out it was stolen. When Eric learns that his mother turned her away, he says it to her face. Then - you killed her. The Inspector has one last speech before he goes. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. If people will not learn that lesson, he warns, they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Then he walks out. Gerald comes back from his walk with news he picked up from a police sergeant. That man wasn't a police officer. Birling telephones the chief constable, and there is no Inspector Goole on the force. Gerald telephones the infirmary, and nobody has died there after drinking disinfectant for months. Birling, Sybil and Gerald are delighted, and they call it a hoax. Sheila and Eric are not, because what they did to that girl still happened.

Then the telephone rings again. The police tell Birling that a girl has just died on her way to the infirmary. His own words close the play: a police inspector is on his way here - to ask some - questions.

That is why the play does not end when the Inspector leaves. Whoever he was, a girl is dead, and the evening is about to start again.

Five people did something to Eva Smith, and there are two ways to line them up. In the order the play shows them to you, it runs Birling, Sheila, Gerald, Sybil, and Eric last. Now line them up by what happened first in her own life. The factory came first, then the shop, then Gerald's flat. Which two did Priestley swap: Sheila and Gerald, Sybil and Eric, or Birling and Sheila? Sybil and Eric. Eric knew her before she ever went to the committee, but the play shows you Sybil first. Now the harder part: why would Priestley put the mother's refusal before the son's story? Because Sybil demands the father be punished before she knows the father is her son. The swap makes her condemn her own family in her own words. Now, put back in Eva's own order, the five make one chain. Birling's sacking sends her to the shop, and Sheila's complaint loses her that job, so she is alone when Gerald finds her. Gerald drops her, so she is alone again when Eric finds her. And Eric's baby sends her to the committee, where Sybil shuts the last door. Here is a line to carry through every video on this play. One chain, five links: every link hands her on to the next. No single link kills her, and all five of them do.

Knowing that chain is where writing about the play begins, but it is not yet an answer. Take Sheila's link and tell it two ways. First way. Sheila was jealous of a pretty shop girl, complained to the manager, and got her sacked. Second way. Priestley has Sheila admit her jealousy the moment she is asked, so the daughter of the house is the first person to accept any blame. Which of those two is an answer to a question, and which is only a retelling? The second. The facts are the same, but it says what the playwright is doing with them, and why. One examiner's report records this about the weakest answers on the play: students had a tendency towards simply narrative responses which showed some grasp of the text but assuredly not of the tasks. In plain words, those students knew the story and told it back - and the question they were set went unanswered. The fix is one habit. After every fact you use, add what Priestley is doing with it.

That story carries three big ideas, and each one has a video of its own in this chapter. Ordinary decisions, each one small, add up to a death. The video on responsibility builds that argument. The family splits by who can still learn, not by who is guilty. The video on young and old takes that one. And everyone in the room is hiding something, the Inspector most of all. The videos on secrets and on the Inspector pick that up. So every other video in this chapter hangs off this story. The people are on one side, the big ideas on the other, and two videos on the exam itself sit alongside them.

Time to see how much of that evening you can rebuild on your own. Who are the five people in the chain, in Eva's own order? In Eva's own order: Birling, Sheila, Gerald, Eric, then Sybil. The factory, the shop, the flat, Eric, then the committee. Next, a new case: if Eric confessed before his mother spoke, what would her demand lose? Its sting. She would already know the father is her son, and she would never demand his public shame. Now the last: who says that man wasn't a police officer, Birling or Gerald? Gerald. He is the one who unpicks the Inspector, and Birling is glad to follow him. A doorbell starts the evening, a telephone starts it again, and in between five people hand one girl down a chain.

Put a thumbs-up on this one once the story feels done, so you never have to sit through it twice. Every other video on this play comes back to this evening, so it keeps coming round.

Next in the chapter: nineteen twelve or nineteen forty-five, the two dates Priestley is writing about.

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