Key Quotes

• "fire and blood and anguish" - main message
• "you are all more or less responsible for her death"
• "we don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other"
• "a chain of events" - the chain of events is a metaphor for the way in which the characters are connected to each other
• "we don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other"


  implys socialist message
• The Inspector


  • Creates an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness
  • A man in his fifties, dressed in a plain darkish suit
  • Speaks carefully, weightily, and has a disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses before actually speaking
• The Inspector: '"She'd swallowed a lot of strong disinfectant. Burnt her inside out, of course."'
• The Inspector: '"She was in great agony… Suicide of course."'
• The Inspector: '"This young woman, Eva Smith, was a bit out of the ordinary."'
• The Inspector: '"One person and one line of inquiry at a time."'
• The Inspector: '"What happened then may have determined what happened to her afterwards… a chain of events."'
• The Inspector: '"Why did you refuse?"'
• The Inspector: '"It's my duty to ask questions."'
• The Inspector: '"It's better to ask for the earth than to take it."'
• The Inspector: '"I don't play golf."'
• The Inspector: '"The girl's dead though."'
• The Inspector: '"There's a lot of young women living that sort of existence in every city and big town in this country."'
• The Inspector: '"It would do us all a bit of good if sometimes we tried to put ourselves in the place of these young women counting their pennies in their dingy little back bedrooms."'
• The Inspector: '"That's more or less what I was thinking earlier tonight, when I was in the Infirmary looking at what was left of Eva Smith. A nice little promising life there, I thought, and a nasty mess somebody's made of it."'
• The Inspector: '"All in good time."'
• The Inspector: '"If you're easy with me, I'm easy with you."'
• The Inspector: '"You're partly to blame, just as your father is."'
• The Inspector: '"You might be said to have been jealous of her."'
• The Inspector: '"You used the power you had… to punish the girl."'
• The Inspector: '"But you can't. It's too late. She's dead."'
• The Inspector: '"I'm not going until I know all that happened."'
• The Inspector: '"You think young women ought to be protected against unpleasant and disturbing things?"'
• The Inspector: '"A girl died tonight. A pretty, lively sort of girl, who never did anybody any harm. But she died in misery and agony – hating life."'
• The Inspector: '"We have to share something. If there's nothing else, we have to share our guilt."'
• The Inspector: '"He must wait his turn."'
• The Inspector: '"Public men, Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges."'
• The Inspector: '"I think that you did something terribly wrong – and that you're going to spend the rest of your life regretting it."'
• The Inspector: '"She'd been turned out and turned down too many times. This was the end."'
• The Inspector: '"I'm losing all patience with you people. What did she say?"'
• The Inspector: '"You'll be able to divide the responsibility between you when I've gone."'
• The Inspector: '"Each of you helped to kill her, remember that. Never forget it."'
• The Inspector: '"Used her at the end of a stupid drunken evening, as if she was an animal, a thing, not a person."'
• The Inspector: '"One Eva Smith has gone – but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths left with us."'
• The Inspector: '"Their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives."'
• The Inspector: '"We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other."'