An Inspector Calls - Extensive Review (Warning - Spoilers!)
(WARNING - SPOILERS!)
By: Fiona
March 18, 2014
‘An Inspector Calls’ is a morality play written by J.B. Priestley in 1912. In this play, a wealthy upper-class family is being questioned by a mysterious inspector concerning the suicide of a young woman named Eva Smith. As the play progresses, the Inspector slowly uncovers the part that each of them had to play in her death.
Upon first discovering this play, I wrongly assumed that this Inspector was engaged in a telephone conversation (having a word with a double meaning in a title can be rather confusing). Though I now understand that all of the dialogue takes place face to face, the attributes of a telephone conversation can still help to show my opinions on the strategic ways in which Priestley reveals the moral of the play to the audience.
One aspect that I felt that J.B. Priestley appeared to be particularly good at while writing this play was his structurization of the plot. Like someone absentmindedly playing with a telephone cord, he elaborately twists and turns the plot in a variety of directions, creating and untangling knots as he sees fit. For example, after watching every member of the Birling family being exposed to scandal, I assumed that Priestley would go in for a conclusive and dramatic ending, with the seemingly unshakable upper-class family in social ruin and his moral of the realization of our effect on others driven into my brain. But only a few minutes later he unties that knot and tangles an even bigger one in its place by revealing to us, as Gerald so puts it, that “we’ve been had”, and that the Inspector was nothing but a phony (get it? phone-y?). This produced the desired effect, having completely hooked me on the ending, showing the author’s skill and experience through his understanding of the audience. The play would have been deemed perfectly acceptable had he chosen to end it where I assumed he would, but he has made it memorable by going above and beyond in a creative and dramatic way to drive his morals home. On the other hand, at times these morals can appear to be somewhat forced upon the audience.
With the confessions of more and more of the main characters, Sheila Birling becomes increasingly more obstinate that her family’s ethical approach to this tragedy has been completely backwards, and subsequently tries to tell them that their actions “drove that girl to commit suicide!”. While this is an effective way of yet again driving home his morals, it feels a bit too ironic to make one of the supposed antagonists uphold those morals in the continual debate of the play. I agree that what those characters did was wrong, however with Sheila jumping in on every other sentence with some squabble about moral teachings seems to be a bit unnecessary. In addition, much of the lighting apparatus is continually focused on her (to make her appear in the moral spotlight) even when she wasn’t the speaking character. Overall the effect was similar to a badly connected telephone conversation, in which constant white noise distracts the callers while they are speaking to each other. This takes away from the audience’s understanding of the characters.
Even though Sheila was not quite up to snuff, there are other characters in this play who were presented very well by Priestley. For example, Eva Smith. The dialogue in this play is spread out very evenly between all of the characters except for her, who is arguably the main character. She is the voice on the other end of the telephone, whom you never encounter face to face over the course of the conversation but who forces their life story on you in the space of a few hours. The fact that we never meet Ms. Smith supports the Birlings’ theory that there were “probably four or five different girls”, and that the Inspector was in fact lying. However, not meeting her as a character also allows us to form our own opinions on the subject. Similarly, if Eva Smith is at the other end of the telephone line, then the Inspector is the mysterious caller who initiates the conversation and then hangs up abruptly just when things start to get interesting. This technique of Priestley’s to reveal nothing about the Inspector effectively throws a wrench into our judgement of his integrity, which in turn ensures that we won’t question his morals. After suddenly being left with a dial tone in your ear, your first desire would be to figure out the identity of the unknown caller, which is exactly what the characters do.
The mysterious Inspector tries to teach the characters in this play the true power of the ripple effect, but through him J.B. Priestley also attempts to convey this message to the audience in effective and creative ways. His structure of the plot, explicit morals and mysterious characters all are very effective in driving home his message to the audience, and keeps us all completely under his thumb by ending in a cliffhanger. I was very impressed by this play, and am full of questions from the sudden end. Who knows, if I don’t uphold the lessons of the Inspector, he may give me a c- hang on. Is my phone ringing….
By: Fiona
March 18, 2014
‘An Inspector Calls’ is a morality play written by J.B. Priestley in 1912. In this play, a wealthy upper-class family is being questioned by a mysterious inspector concerning the suicide of a young woman named Eva Smith. As the play progresses, the Inspector slowly uncovers the part that each of them had to play in her death.
Upon first discovering this play, I wrongly assumed that this Inspector was engaged in a telephone conversation (having a word with a double meaning in a title can be rather confusing). Though I now understand that all of the dialogue takes place face to face, the attributes of a telephone conversation can still help to show my opinions on the strategic ways in which Priestley reveals the moral of the play to the audience.
One aspect that I felt that J.B. Priestley appeared to be particularly good at while writing this play was his structurization of the plot. Like someone absentmindedly playing with a telephone cord, he elaborately twists and turns the plot in a variety of directions, creating and untangling knots as he sees fit. For example, after watching every member of the Birling family being exposed to scandal, I assumed that Priestley would go in for a conclusive and dramatic ending, with the seemingly unshakable upper-class family in social ruin and his moral of the realization of our effect on others driven into my brain. But only a few minutes later he unties that knot and tangles an even bigger one in its place by revealing to us, as Gerald so puts it, that “we’ve been had”, and that the Inspector was nothing but a phony (get it? phone-y?). This produced the desired effect, having completely hooked me on the ending, showing the author’s skill and experience through his understanding of the audience. The play would have been deemed perfectly acceptable had he chosen to end it where I assumed he would, but he has made it memorable by going above and beyond in a creative and dramatic way to drive his morals home. On the other hand, at times these morals can appear to be somewhat forced upon the audience.
With the confessions of more and more of the main characters, Sheila Birling becomes increasingly more obstinate that her family’s ethical approach to this tragedy has been completely backwards, and subsequently tries to tell them that their actions “drove that girl to commit suicide!”. While this is an effective way of yet again driving home his morals, it feels a bit too ironic to make one of the supposed antagonists uphold those morals in the continual debate of the play. I agree that what those characters did was wrong, however with Sheila jumping in on every other sentence with some squabble about moral teachings seems to be a bit unnecessary. In addition, much of the lighting apparatus is continually focused on her (to make her appear in the moral spotlight) even when she wasn’t the speaking character. Overall the effect was similar to a badly connected telephone conversation, in which constant white noise distracts the callers while they are speaking to each other. This takes away from the audience’s understanding of the characters.
Even though Sheila was not quite up to snuff, there are other characters in this play who were presented very well by Priestley. For example, Eva Smith. The dialogue in this play is spread out very evenly between all of the characters except for her, who is arguably the main character. She is the voice on the other end of the telephone, whom you never encounter face to face over the course of the conversation but who forces their life story on you in the space of a few hours. The fact that we never meet Ms. Smith supports the Birlings’ theory that there were “probably four or five different girls”, and that the Inspector was in fact lying. However, not meeting her as a character also allows us to form our own opinions on the subject. Similarly, if Eva Smith is at the other end of the telephone line, then the Inspector is the mysterious caller who initiates the conversation and then hangs up abruptly just when things start to get interesting. This technique of Priestley’s to reveal nothing about the Inspector effectively throws a wrench into our judgement of his integrity, which in turn ensures that we won’t question his morals. After suddenly being left with a dial tone in your ear, your first desire would be to figure out the identity of the unknown caller, which is exactly what the characters do.
The mysterious Inspector tries to teach the characters in this play the true power of the ripple effect, but through him J.B. Priestley also attempts to convey this message to the audience in effective and creative ways. His structure of the plot, explicit morals and mysterious characters all are very effective in driving home his message to the audience, and keeps us all completely under his thumb by ending in a cliffhanger. I was very impressed by this play, and am full of questions from the sudden end. Who knows, if I don’t uphold the lessons of the Inspector, he may give me a c- hang on. Is my phone ringing….