The Complete Guide to An Inspector Calls
The whole story, told properly — a dinner party, a knock at the door, and a family taken apart one confession at a time.
Introduction
- The dinner party that never ends — What this play is, and why it still works
- The man behind the knock at the door — J. B. Priestley in three scenes
The world behind the play
- Eva Smith's world — The 1912 that the Birlings never have to see
Through the play
- Act One: the celebration — Twenty perfect minutes before the doorbell
- Act One: the Inspector arrives — Birling denies. Sheila breaks. A name detonates.
- Act Two: Gerald's summer — The kindest man in the play does damage anyway
- Act Two: Mrs Birling walks into the trap — The play's most terrible piece of construction
- Act Three: Eric, and the Inspector's last word — The hardest confession, then the sermon
- Act Three: the double ending — The escape hatch, and the door that slams shut
The characters
- The parents: Arthur and Sybil Birling — Two kinds of armour, neither of which cracks
- The children: Sheila and Eric — The play's experiment: what if someone actually listens?
- The Inspector and Eva Smith — The judge who may be a ghost; the victim who is never on stage
The themes
- The big four: responsibility, class, gender, generation — One argument, four fronts
The writer's craft
- How the trap is built — Structure, stagecraft and the war of voices
Interpretations
- The open questions — Where the best essays live
The examination
- Taking it into the exam — Questions, a model paragraph, and the traps to avoid