Play Analysis

• Morality play


  Allegorical drama popular in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries in which the characters personified moral qualities such as charity or vice or abstractions as death or youth, and moral lessons are taught
• An Inspector Calls as a morality play

  • Different characters typify certain character traits (e.g. the seven deadly sins)
  • The overarching message is that we should not be just thinking of ourselves but look after one another
• Detective fiction

  A story that revolves around the investigation of a serious crime, usually murder, by a detective
• An Inspector Calls as a detective fiction

  Inverts the generic convention by having nearly all the characters found to be guilty, rather than narrowing down to one suspect
• Priestley inverts the detective fiction genre to make the point that society as a whole is guilty of neglecting and abusing its most vulnerable members
• Anadiplosis (repetition of the last word of a clause at the beginning of the next)

  1. What happened to her then

  2. May have determined what happened to her after

  3. And what happened to her afterwards

  4. May have driven her to suicide
• Anadiplosis

  A structural device that links sentences/clauses together, emphasising how the content is inextricably connected
• The play takes place entirely in the dining room of the Birling's house, with no changes of scene
• Lack of scene changes

  • Suggests the Birling's self-absorption and disconnectedness from the wider world
  • Creates a claustrophobic mood
  • Allows focus on the moral lesson of the play
• The overarching message that J.B. Priestley wants the audience to take from the play is that we are members of one body and are responsible for each other
• This message is the opposite of the capitalist values represented by Mr. Birling
• Priestley's use of structure

  1. Birling's speech is interrupted by the doorbell, signalling the arrival of Inspector Gould

  2. This enacts the clash between Birling's capitalist values and Gould's socialist values
• Dramatic irony

  When the audience knows something that the characters on stage do not know
• The dramatic irony in An Inspector Calls is very blunt and over-the-top, unlike more subtle uses of dramatic irony in other plays
• The dramatic irony, such as Birling's claim that the Titanic is "unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable", underlines the fact that An Inspector Calls is a play with a moral message that needs to be hammered home clearly
• Mr. Birling: '"The Titanic is unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable"'
• Priestley's wording heightens the dramatic irony, with the repetition of "unsinkable" and the intensifier "absolutely"
• The dramatic irony suggests that if Birling is wrong about the Titanic and World War 1, his capitalist political views may also be misguided
• The way Birling speaks to the maid, Edna, highlights the class dynamics in the play, with Birling using blunt, monosyllabic commands that suggest no attempt at politeness or respect
• Birling's offhand comments about Edna waiting up late without choice or recompense subtly add to the dramatic force of the play's exploration of unfair working conditions for the working class