Inspector Calls

• Mr Birling

  Personification of the capitalist ideology, presented as pompous and pretentious. Priestley is criticising the complacency of capitalist prosperity through his character.
• Mr Birling: '"Rather portentous man"'
• Mr Birling

  Represents the capitalist ideology, greed, and is critical of the complacency of capitalist prosperity
• Mr Birling's character

  Priestley is criticising the complacency of capitalist prosperity
• Mr Birling: '"You're just the kind of son-in-law I wanted"'
• Mr Birling: '"A man has to make his own way, has to look after himself, and his family"'
• Mr Birling: '"Why didn't you come to me when you found yourself in this mess"'
• Mr Birling: '"Don't talk to me like that, your trouble is you've been spoilt"'
• Mr Birling: '"I am not defending him"'
• Mr Birling: '"I speak as a hard-headed business man"'
• Mr Birling: '"You'd think everybody has to look after everybody else"'
• Mr Birling: '"As if we are all mixed up together like bees in a hive - community and all that nonsense"'
• Mr Birling: '"Probably a socialist or some sort of crank"'
• Mr Birling: '"It's my duty to keep labour costs down"'
• Mr Birling: '"There's a lot of wild talk about labour trouble, Don't worry we've past the worst of it"'
• Mr Birling: '"We're in a time of increasing prosperity"'
• Mr Birling: '"The Germans don't want war"'
• Mr Birling: '"Unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable"'
• Mr Birling: '"Obviously it has nothing to do with this wretched girls suicide"'
• Mr Birling: '"I can't accept any responsibility"'
• Mr Birling: '"I was quite justified"'
• Mr Birling: '"He could've been lying the whole time"'
• Mr Birling: '"If we were all responsible for everything that happened to everybody…it would be very awkward wouldn't it"'
• Mr Birling


  Middle/upper class, elder generation factory owner, socially inferior to wife, privileged; wealthy, male, white, conservative
• Sheila Birling

  Symbol of hope, change and acts as a moral compass as well as representing an attitude of progression for women's rights. Conscious of the Birling family.
• Sheila Birling: '"Very pleased with life and rather excited"'
• Sheila Birling: '"Oh wonderful Mummy, isn't it a beauty?"'
• Sheila Birling: '"Mummy"'
• Sheila Birling: '"Now i really feel engaged"'
• Sheila Birling: '"I'll never let this go out my sight for an instant"'
• Sheila Birling: '"I wish you hadn't told me"'
• Sheila Birling: '"Was she pretty?"'
• Sheila Birling: '"But these girls aren't cheap labour, they're people"'
• Sheila Birling: '"So I'm really responsible?"'
• Sheila Birling: '"I'll never never do it again to anybody"'
• Sheila Birling: '"Why you fool he knows of course he knows"'
• Sheila Birling: '"I know I'm to blame"'
• Sheila Birling: '"Probably between us we killed her"'
• Sheila Birling: '"Of course not. You were the wonderful Fairy Prince. You must've adored it, Gerald"'
• Sheila Birling: '"She hands him the ring"'