Literature: An Inspector Calls (J.B. Priestley)
An Inspector Calls is J.B. Priestley's 1945 play, a GCSE English Literature modern drama set text in which the mysterious Inspector Goole exposes the Birling family's collective responsibility for the death of a young working-class woman, Eva Smith. Exam questions give a printed extract and ask how Priestley presents a character or theme in that extract and across the whole play, testing knowledge of the text, analysis of his dramatic techniques, and understanding of his socialist message and Edwardian context.
Before you start
Make sure you're comfortable with these topics first:
Method
- Read the printed extract closely, annotating Priestley's stage directions, dialogue and dramatic irony before planning your answer.
- Identify two or three techniques with a clear, explainable effect, such as stage directions, structure or dramatic irony, rather than simply listing quotations.
- Move outward from the extract to the whole play, choosing moments that develop or contrast with what the extract shows, tracking how each Birling responds to the Inspector.
- Link analysis to Priestley's socialist message and Edwardian context, such as class, gender and the audience's knowledge of the two World Wars to come, where it genuinely deepens the point.
- Use precise subject terminology, such as dramatic irony, cyclical structure, foil and mouthpiece, accurately rather than for decoration.
- Plan a clear structure, with an introduction stating your line of argument, points moving through the extract then the play, and a brief conclusion, before you start writing.
Worked example
Near the end of the play, the Inspector leaves the family with one sustained metaphor: society is a single body, not a collection of separate people. Explain how this moment presents the Inspector's message.
- Identify the technique: the body metaphor presents society as a single organism, where harming one part inevitably damages the whole.
- Note that the Inspector speaks throughout in the first person plural: he directly implicates everyone present, and by extension the audience, rather than blaming the Birlings individually.
- Explain the effect: framing responsibility as collective rather than personal directly opposes Mr Birling's earlier insistence that a man is answerable for his own family and for nobody beyond it.
- Link to the wider play: this speech follows the Inspector's methodical exposure of how each character, however small their individual part, contributed to Eva Smith's death.
- Link to context: Priestley, writing just after the Second World War but setting the play in 1912, uses the Inspector as a mouthpiece for his own socialist belief that ignoring this lesson leads to further suffering.
- Final answer: the speech presents the Inspector's message as a direct challenge to individualism, using the metaphor of one body and collective pronouns to insist that responsibility for others cannot be avoided, a warning Priestley delivers with the full weight of hindsight about the wars to come.
Practice questions
Type your answer and press Check to be marked straight away, or reveal the answer and mark yourself.
Q1What is the occasion being celebrated at the start of the play?Show answer
Answer: Sheila and Gerald's engagement.
Q2Why does Mr Birling sack Eva Smith from his factory?Show answer
Answer: She helps organise the other workers to ask for a pay rise/strike.
Q3Identify the technique in Mr Birling's confident claim that the Titanic cannot possibly sink.Show answer
Answer: Dramatic irony - the audience knows the ship sank, undermining his authority and judgement.
Q4What name does Eva Smith later use when she has an affair with Gerald?Show answer
Answer: Daisy Renton.
Q5True or false: the play's action takes place over several weeks.Show answer
Answer: False - it takes place in real time, over a single evening.
Q6Give one piece of evidence that the play ends on a cyclical structure.Show answer
Answer: The final phone call, announcing that a girl has died and an inspector is coming to ask questions, mirrors the Inspector's arrival at the start of the play.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a English exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
State four things the audience learns about how different family members contributed to Eva Smith's death.
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Tick each line you got. Your score builds from the marks on the scheme.
Nothing ticked yet - 4 available
Explain how Priestley presents the Inspector's message in the closing speech from the worked example above.
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Tick each line you got. Your score builds from the marks on the scheme.
Nothing ticked yet - 6 available
'Sheila is the most important character in the play.' To what extent do you agree?
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Tick each line you got. Your score builds from the marks on the scheme.
Nothing ticked yet - 5 available
See real English past-paper questions, with official mark schemes →
Free printable worksheet
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