Discuss the Role of the Inspector in An Inspector Calls Essay -- An In

Birlings, he controls the development of events: who will speak and when; who may or may not leave; who will or will not see the photograph. He even Priestley describes the Inspector, when he first appears on stage, in terms of 'massiveness, solidity and purposefulness' (p.11), symbolizing the fact that he is an unstoppable force within the play. His 'disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses before speaking' (p.11) gives the impression that he sees through surface appearances to the real person beneath. It also gives him a thoughtfulness that contrasts with the thoughtlessness of each character's treatment of the girl. His role in the play is not simply to confront each character with the truth, but to force each character to admit the truth they already know. He works methodically through the characters present one at a time, partly because he recognizes that 'otherwise, there's a muddle' (p.12), and partly because, given the chance, the characters are all quick to defend each other, or to call upon outside help (such as Colonel Roberts) in order to avoid accepting the truth of what he suggests. He arrives just after Birling has been setting out his views of life: that every man must only look out for himself. The Inspector's rule is to show that this is not the case. Throughout the play he demonstrates how people are responsible for how they affect the lives of others; his views are summed up in his visionary and dramatic final speech: that 'we are members of one body. We are responsible for each other' (p.56). Responsibility is one of the play's two key themes, and the Inspector is Priestley's vehicle for putting across his own views of this as a socialist. In this final speec... ...led as both an alcoholic and a thief. After the Inspector has gone, Birling simply wants things to return to the way they were. He cannot understand Sheila's and Eric's insistence that there is something to be learnt, and he is relieved and triumphant when he feels that scandal has been avoided and everything is all right. Right up until the end, he claims that 'there's every excuse for what both your mother and I did - it turned out unfortunately, that's all' (p.57). Birling is not the cold and narrow-minded person that his wife is; he simply believes in what he says. He is a limited man, who is shown to be wrong about many things in the play; it is the Birlings of the world whom Priestley feared - in 1945 - would not be willing or able to learn the lessons of the past, and so it is to the younger generation that Priestley hopefully looked instead...