3.2.1.1The text at a glance
The prosperous Birling family are celebrating Sheila's engagement to Gerald Croft when Inspector Goole arrives to investigate the suicide of Eva Smith. One by one each character is shown to have contributed to her death. The Inspector leaves; the family discover no such inspector exists and no girl has died. The telephone then rings to report exactly the death he described.
Written in 1945 and set in 1912. Priestley was a socialist writing for an audience that had lived through two wars, the Depression and the Titanic, all of which Birling confidently dismisses. The play was first performed in the Soviet Union because no London theatre was free.
- dramatic irony
- the audience knowing what a character does not; Birling's predictions are all proved wrong by history
- morality play
- a medieval form in which a figure arrives to judge; the Inspector works the same way
- cyclical structure
- an ending that returns to the beginning, as the final telephone call does
3.2.1.1Characters
The Inspector controls the order of revelation absolutely, which gives him authority over the structure itself. His name, Goole, invites a supernatural reading that the ending encourages.
Sheila and Eric accept responsibility and are left holding the play's argument; Birling and Mrs Birling do not. The family divides by generation rather than by guilt, which locates Priestley's hope in the young.
Eva Smith never appears and never speaks. The working class is present only as an absence, which is itself the point.
3.2.1.1Themes
Social responsibility is the play's demand, made through a chain of events in which every character is complicit in one death. Class is the mechanism: Eva is dismissed from the works, from Milwards and by the charity committee, each time by someone with power over her. The generational split carries the argument about whether anything will change.
Common mistake
Writing that the Inspector is definitely a ghost, or definitely a fraud. The play deliberately refuses to say, and the ambiguity is what makes the ending work.
3.2.1.1The writer's methods
The lighting direction shifts from 'pink and intimate' to 'brighter and harder' when the Inspector arrives, so the staging enacts the change of register. Unity of time and place traps the family with the consequences of their actions, and the Inspector's final speech breaks out of naturalism into direct address, speaking past the Birlings to the audience.
Worked example
Answer:
- The chain of events makes everyone complicit in one death
- The family divides by generation, not by guilt
- Eva's silence is the play's structuring absence
- The 1912 setting lets a 1945 audience judge with hindsight
AO1-AO4How this text is examined
This text is examined in Paper 2, Section A. The question is worth 34 marks and two essay questions are offered on your text and you answer one; no extract is printed, so quotations must come from memory. Allow about 45 minutes.
The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks, AO4 4 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.
Common mistake
Retelling the plot. Narrative summary earns nothing under any assessment objective, however accurate it is. Every paragraph should be making a point about how or why, not about what happens.
Four of the marks are for AO4: vocabulary and sentence structures used to control meaning, and accurate spelling and punctuation. These are the cheapest marks on the paper and the easiest to lose by rushing the final paragraph.