What is the significance of Inspector Goole in 'An Inspector Calls'?
What is the significance of Inspector Goole in the play?
The audience are first introduced to Inspector Goole half way through act 1. He is a mysterious character from the very beginning, but we see that he is confident and has an air of authority about him and he is determined to make the family face their guilt. He claims that he has seen the dead body of Eva Smith who died earlier that day after she had ‘swallowed a lot of strong disinfectant’. He is of much significance throughout the play as Priestly uses him as his title character and as a device to voice his opinion of society in 1945 when the book was first published.
The setting of the play is conveyed through stage directions at the beginning of the script, especially through the use of lighting so that the audience have an immediate impression of a ‘heavily comfortable’ household. Before the Inspector arrives the lighting is ‘pink and intimate’ representing the special occasion in which the Birling family are feeling very pleased about as Shelia Birling is marrying into a higher class. We then get told that when the Inspector arrives the lighting should then be ‘brighter and harder’ which foreshadows the events to come in the play, and the reality of the situation, as there is nowhere to hide in bright light. Priestly uses the lighting as a dramatic device to help create tension from when the Inspector first arrives and helps to show his importance.
Inspector Goole enters the play in a very ironic way as he comes just after Mr Birling, a ‘hard-headed practical business man’ has given a small speech to Gerald and Eric saying that ‘a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own’. This shows that he is a capitalist and only cares for his family. This is irony because the Inspector has come to help the family to realise that they have not been playing a good role in society, as all they’re wrong doings have led Eva Smith to suicide. We can also realise that the
The audience are first introduced to Inspector Goole half way through act 1. He is a mysterious character from the very beginning, but we see that he is confident and has an air of authority about him and he is determined to make the family face their guilt. He claims that he has seen the dead body of Eva Smith who died earlier that day after she had ‘swallowed a lot of strong disinfectant’. He is of much significance throughout the play as Priestly uses him as his title character and as a device to voice his opinion of society in 1945 when the book was first published.
The setting of the play is conveyed through stage directions at the beginning of the script, especially through the use of lighting so that the audience have an immediate impression of a ‘heavily comfortable’ household. Before the Inspector arrives the lighting is ‘pink and intimate’ representing the special occasion in which the Birling family are feeling very pleased about as Shelia Birling is marrying into a higher class. We then get told that when the Inspector arrives the lighting should then be ‘brighter and harder’ which foreshadows the events to come in the play, and the reality of the situation, as there is nowhere to hide in bright light. Priestly uses the lighting as a dramatic device to help create tension from when the Inspector first arrives and helps to show his importance.
Inspector Goole enters the play in a very ironic way as he comes just after Mr Birling, a ‘hard-headed practical business man’ has given a small speech to Gerald and Eric saying that ‘a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own’. This shows that he is a capitalist and only cares for his family. This is irony because the Inspector has come to help the family to realise that they have not been playing a good role in society, as all they’re wrong doings have led Eva Smith to suicide. We can also realise that the