AN INSPECTOR CALLS ACT BY ACT

Summary

The play opens with the Birling family celebrating the engagement of their daughter to Gerald Croft, the son of an upper-class family. It is April 1912.

It is here that the doorbell signals the entrance of the inspector. The inspector proceeds to question Birling about his sacking of one of his employees in September of 1910. The employee, Eva Smith, committed suicide that evening, by drinking disinfectant. The inspector explains that the sacking began a chain of events that led to the tragedy.

The inspector then explains that Eva Smith found a job in a clothing shop but after less than two months is sacked, this time because a customer, who turns out to be Sheila Birling, complained about it. It emerges that Sheila complain out of spite. Sheila is upset and distressed and begins to regret her actions.

Before the end of Act one, the inspector reveals that Eva Smith changed her name to Daisy Renton. Gerald's reaction on hearing the name, indicates that he knew a girl by that name and Sheila, alone with Gerald in the dining room, soon works out that he had an affair with this girl the previous summer.

The act ends on a cliff-hanger as the inspector returns and asks, 'Well?'

Key dramatic devices and issues

The stage directions at the start of the play are important for what they reveal about the characters and the Birling home, as well as devices such as the lighting at the start (pink and intimate) which changes when the inspector arrives, to cold and bright. This change has symbolic significance. The inspector intends to shine a light on the truth.

The entrance of the inspector happens just as Birling was lecturing about his views that people should look after themselves and he seems to advocate individualism. The inspector, at various points in the play argues against this view. He believes in community, such as when he says, 'we are members of one body.'

Act Two

Summary

In Act two we watch the interrogation of Gerald and Mrs Birling and it is revealed that Eric, who is not in the room at this point, was the father of Eva Smith's baby.

Gerald had met Eva Smith in a bar and set her up in a flat belonging to a friend of his. Gerald holds all of the power in a relationship with someone who relies on his money.

We then find out that Mrs Birling runs a charity and Eva Smith had recently gone to the charity for help. Mrs Birling took a dislike to her and refused her any help. When it is revealed that Eva Smith was pregnant at the time, Mrs Birling claims that the father of the child should be held responsible for her condition. The others begin to suspect that the father of the child was Eric.

The act ends on another cliff-hanger as Eric appears in the doorway.

Key dramatic devices and issues

Stage directions continue to be important in this scene. The divergence between Sheila and her parents is illustrated through the way Mrs Birling's self-confidence make Sheila feel uneasy. Sheila realised that this is exactly the kind of thing that the inspector will attack. There is a growing mutual understanding between Sheila and the inspector.

We also get a glimpse of the seediness, corruption, and hypocrisy of middle-class Brumley society in this scene, represented particularly by Alderman Meggarty.

The idea of collective responsibility and collective guilt is reinforced in this scene when the inspector says, 'If there's nothing else, we'll have to share our guilt.' This is confirmed in the next act just before the inspector leaves.

Act Three

This first part of this act continues with the revelations. Eric describes his encounters with Eva Smith (he could not remember her name). He states at one point that he had, in effect, forced himself on her as he had 'threatened to make a row' if she refused him entry into her room. It is then that Eric discovers that his mother had recently refused help to Eva Smith.

The relationship between Birling parents and children deteriorates as Sheila and Eric begin to take responsibility for their actions but Mr and Mrs Birling do not.

The inspector leaves after a dramatic speech in which he claims there are millions of people like Eva Smith and everyone should work together to make life better as 'we are members of one body,' contradicting Mr Birling's speech in act one.

The rest of the play sees the Birlings and Gerald question whether the inspector was real or whether it had all been an elaborate hoax. They convince themselves that they have nothing to answer for and the tension eases. It is not until the final moments of the play when the phone rings and Mr Birling is told that a girl has died in the hospital and that a 'real' inspector is on his way to their house to question them that the tension again rises and the play (like the previous two acts) ends on a cliff-hanger.

Key dramatic devices and issues

The two key moments in this scene are the inspector's speech before his exit and the telephone call at the end. The inspector drives home his message when he states, 'We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.' The repetition of the first-person plural pronoun indicates the belief that it is a collective responsibility. The speech is also a warning about what might happen if this message is ignored, perhaps also illustrated in the two world wars and the Russian revolution in the years following 1912.

In final lines of the play, the phone call from the police is a shock to the characters, and 'they stare guiltily and dumbfounded' at each other. This final moment is a stark contrast to the celebratory atmosphere at the start.

The play ends with the whole story about to start over again. There are several interpretations of this cyclical structure that Priestley employs. One might be that not all the characters have learnt their lesson. There is now another opportunity for Mr and Mrs Birling and Gerald to repent. We also have a sense of the characters being stuck in time, unable to escape the defining moment of their lives. Thirdly, Priestley may be suggesting that when the curtain falls, the kind of events depicting in the play - the way that millions of Eva Smiths are exploited and abused by the more powerful in society - will continue into the future, especially if the warning at the heart of the play is not heeded.