Inspector Calls Analysis Worksheet
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Inspector Calls Analysis Worksheet
Study passage: confidence before the Inspector arrives
At the start of J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, the Birling family celebrate Sheila and Gerald’s engagement over dinner. Arthur Birling, a successful businessman, speaks with great confidence about the future. He predicts that international conflict is unlikely because society appears secure and prosperous. He also praises a new ocean liner, insisting that it is “absolutely unsinkable”. The audience, watching a play set in 1912, knows that the Titanic will sink in 1912 and that a world war will begin soon afterwards. Birling’s certainty is therefore dramatically ironic: the audience can see that his predictions are wrong. Birling’s attention to the ship’s enormous size and luxurious facilities also tells us what impresses him. His repeated emphasis on its weight makes his speech sound boastful, as if figures and wealth can guarantee safety. When his wife gently warns him to be careful, he dismisses her concern and says that Gerald is practically one of the family. Sheila then teases Gerald about having stayed away from her the previous summer. Her playful remark hints that there may be more beneath the family’s polished celebration than Birling realises. Priestley uses the comfortable dinner setting to introduce a family protected by money and status. The Inspector’s arrival will disturb that comfort. As the characters are questioned, the audience is invited to consider whether confidence, respectability and social position are reliable measures of a person’s judgement or responsibility.
Read closely
Use precise evidence from the study passage. For analysis questions, explain how a detail shapes the audience’s response.
- Society seems stable and prosperous.
- The family has received a warning.
- The ocean liner will protect Britain.
- Gerald has promised to prevent it.
- Birling repeats a figure about the ship’s weight
- Birling brushes aside his wife’s warning
- Sheila teases Gerald about the previous summer
- He appears dismissive of other people’s concerns
- He sounds boastful and impressed by wealth or scale
- Her remark hints that the celebration may hide complications
3 printable pages
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