Arthur Birling embodies the rigid, unyielding capitalism that Priestley spent his career arguing against. To achieve top marks in essays on Mr. Birling, you need to look closely at how language, structure, and dramatic form combine to present him as a symbol of Edwardian complacency and hubris.

This video walks you through the absolute best language, structural devices, and formal techniques to analyse when writing about Mr. Birling across any exam board. We’ll cover key conversational dynamics, his use of business jargon, and his role as a dramatic foil. Furthermore, we’ll explore complex concepts like hubris, staging decisions, and the play's alignment with the Morality Play tradition, showing you how to turn routine character quotes into grade-elevating points of analysis.

Timestamp
0:00 Protagonist to Antagonist
3:00 Conversation Terminology
5:55 Symbolism
14:19 Jargon
15:33 Metaphor
18:48 Foil
20:03 Dramatic Irony
28:58 Hubris
31:19 Staging
33:37 More Symbolism!
35:52 Anagnorisis
38:43 Morality Play

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There are also resources to help you in the Study Materials section:

An Inspector Calls Vocabulary Bank

The words in this vocabulary bank will help you to develop a more sophisticated and high level understanding of the key ideas and concepts in 'An Inspector Calls'.

As well as providing a range of words, their definitions and an example sentence, this book also suggests a number of activities that you can use to revise and put the vocabulary into practice.

Bonus - it's completely free!

An Inspector Calls AQA GCSE Model Answers (Coming soon!)

This resource will have model answers for multiple years of AQA past papers, giving you the ability to see what high grade essays look like for a range of essay questions.

An Inspector Calls Edexcel IGCSE Model Answers (Coming soon!)

This resource will have model answers for multiple years of Edexcel past papers, giving you the ability to see what high grade essays look like for a range of essay questions.

An Inspector Calls Flipped Learning (Coming soon!)

This resource is designed for teachers and students: it is a workbook designed to be completed alongside all of my An Inspector Calls videos. It is essentially a structured way for you to take notes and ensure that you are squeezing every ounce of advice my videos have to offer.

I fully intend to add more videos and study materials on this play. If there's something in particular you're looking for, then register and get in touch to let me know what would help you.

Lesson Transcript:

An Inspector Calls is actually a really challenging text to get a Grade 9 in, in the sense that it's a very simple, straightforward play. So my goal is all about showing you the insightful ideas as well as the core essential ones you need, so that you can not only write a good Mr. Birling essay, but you can write a Grade 9 perceptive Mr. Birling essay.

So, I'm going to be looking at not only the different arguments you could make, but what different kinds of techniques across language, structure, and form you would be able to analyze in order to really prove those ideas. So, let's do this!

I want to start with this point. And if you've seen my video going through the key quotes of the Inspector, you would have already seen me talk about this in the reverse, because the Inspector and Mr. Birling as characters are so closely interrelated. So, if you haven't already seen my Inspector video, make sure you go watch it.

But this is the key premise of what happens to Mr. Birling over the course of the entire play, right? He goes from being the protagonist to the antagonist.

Now, let's start with some definitions:

The protagonist is the main character in a story, the first or leading actor in the case of a play or a drama.
The antagonist is the principal opponent or foil of the main character. Now, I'm going to look at the term "foil" later on in the video, but you can get the idea of being the opponent of the main character.

Now, what's important to understand about Mr. Birling and the Inspector is that it starts off that Mr. Birling is the main character: he is clearly the central focus of the play. Then the Inspector shows up, some stuff happens, and their roles reverse, so that by the end of the play, in the eyes of the audience, it is actually Mr. Birling who is the antagonist, not the Inspector.

So, I'm going to talk you through the section before the Inspector arrives, and how we see him being the protagonist and how we know that he is the main character, but then also why that changes as the play keeps going on.

The first thing that we really need to look at is imperative sentences. So, imperative sentences are sentences which command you to do something. And you can see some examples here that are all taken from before the Inspector arrives:

"You ought to like this port, Gerald."
"Now then, Sybil, you must take a little tonight."
"Tell cook from me..."
"Let me finish, Eric."
"Are you listening, Sheila?" (Okay, that one is an interrogative, not an imperative, but you get the idea!)

He's all about commanding and advising. And the fact that he uses this kind of sentence so often is symbolic of the fact that he is the patriarch of the family before the Inspector shows up: he has the authority, he has the control.

And another way that he does that is with how he manages the conversation. Now, I'm going to be teaching you actually some A-Level terminology here, but it is so useful for trying to analyze characters in An Inspector Calls.

In A-Level English Language, one of the exam boards has them look at conversation terminology, which is all about how we as human beings show our relationships with one another and how much power we have via the way that we speak in conversation. And there are three key terms that I want us to be aware of:

Topic management is who decides what gets talked about and how. So, essentially: what are we talking about? What are we having conversations about? The person who gets to define the narrative, if you will, is the person obviously with more power and more control.
Turn-taking is about who speaks the most or least in conversation. And again, the more you speak, the more it indicates about the power and authority you have in that conversation.
And then finally, back-channeling are words like "Yeah," "Uh-huh," "Sure"—words that indicate that we are listening to and agree with what somebody else is saying. So that's a real indicator of relationship there.

So if we think about Mr. Birling:

First of all, in terms of topic management: before the Inspector arrives, he is the sole person driving conversation. The whole time, what they are talking about is driven by Mr. Birling.
If we think about turn-taking: Mr. Birling is undoubtedly the person who speaks the most. Again, before the Inspector arrives, he dominates conversation: he interrupts Eric, he makes sure Sheila is paying attention to him—very much the dramatic spotlight is on him.
And then in terms of back-channeling: basically the rest of the Birling family back-channel him. Mrs. Birling, Gerald, Eric, and Sheila all at different points indicate their agreement.

Now, there is a little exception to this with Eric. He does attempt to try and argue back against his father. Like when Mr. Birling is talking about how great everything's going to be, Eric's like, "Well, what about war?" And that's when Mr. Birling just shuts him down with "Let me finish, Eric," and also insults his son in the process and says he doesn't know what he's on about and he's just a kid.

By and large, he has that control, he has that agreement. This is not going to stay the same, though. Once the Inspector arrives, guess who starts to topic manage? Guess who speaks the most across the entire investigation? And guess whom most people start back-channeling? It's all the Inspector!

So part of that shift away from protagonist to antagonist is closely tied to Mr. Birling's loss of power and control as the play goes on.

So what we need to look at next is: why does he lose that power and control? And to be able to do that, the first important thing we need to be aware of is the fact that Mr. Birling is a symbol for capitalist values—a very specific part of capitalism.

The play doesn't spend a lot of time looking at, you know, free-market ideals or anything like that. What it does consider is the concepts of social responsibility and collectivism working together, versus the more capitalist belief in individualism.

So individualism—this is just a definition literally off Google—is a social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control. So everything is all about you personally, what you want, and pushing yourself in society; it's not about working for a kind of common good or anything like that.

And we can see this really clearly again right before the Inspector is about to arrive, in the speech that Mr. Birling is giving to Eric and Gerald. Here is what he says:

"What so many of you don't seem to understand now, when things are so much easier, is that a man has to make his own way—has to look after himself—and his family too, of course, when he has one—and so long as he does that he won't come to much harm. But the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you'd think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive—community and all that nonsense. But take my word for it, you youngsters—and I've learnt in the good hard school of experience—that a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own—and—"

(We hear the sharp ring of a front door bell.)

There is loads of stuff to unpack in this chunk here. And I know, for those of you that are dealing with closed-book exams, you might be looking at that chunk and thinking, "I can't memorize all of that." Don't worry, I'm not saying you should! I am suggesting, though, that you will want to memorize little chunks of this speech here and there, because there is so much to work with.

Starting off with the opening bit that seems to be really just explicit and obvious: "a man has to make his own way—has to look after himself..." That is clearly the individualistic values: it's very obvious, it's very clear—not really going to get us Grade 9.

But here's the perceptive bit, right? Because of course, Priestley's goal is to attack individualism, to attack capitalism, and suggest that capitalist, individualistic values are too selfish for the modern world, and actually we need to be much more of a community looking out for one another. And so, he starts to highlight that right here.

Because if you look: "a man has to look after himself—and his family too, of course, when he has one..." Notice those dashes! Those dashes create the effect as if the family is a second thought. And in that way, it's almost as if Mr. Birling is exhibiting his own selfishness: he's so selfish that even his own family is a second thought to him. That's the much more insightful thing to say here.

The next bit we want to look at is the word "cranks": "the way some of these cranks talk and write now." Now, who he's talking about there is socialists. So the "cranks" is socialists, but the word "crank" actually means somebody with weird and unusual ideas. So he is comparing cranks to socialists. So there we're talking about a technique called mode of address: the name that you use to refer to someone. So in this case, the fact that he uses the mode of address "cranks" for socialists shows how he essentially thinks their ideas are ridiculous and there is no value in them—they are very, very strange.

And he continues this thought on with the simile/metaphor: "as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive."

First of all, bees in a hive: bees are known as being collective workers; they work for a common good, and therefore they can be compared with socialism and the concept of collectivism. However, there's some potential insults against socialism within that metaphor, because, of course, bees are homogeneous. By that, I mean they're all the same: there is nothing unique about them; you can't tell Bee 1 from Bee 2, with the exception of the queen bee, which I'll come back to in a second. And so there's this idea that there's nothing unique, nothing special about them whatsoever, and that their lives are also incredibly humdrum and plain because all they do is work in service of the queen bee.

Now, the queen bee is an interesting angle at which he might be attacking perhaps the structure within socialism where there is still a leader. So what ends up happening is one individual gets to be high and mighty and all wonderful, while everybody else is a worker bee underneath them.

Now, it's important to stress here that, of course, Mr. Birling is supposed to be in 1912. At this point, no real country, to my historical knowledge, has properly adopted Marxist socialism. That's going to happen a little bit later: we're obviously going to have Russia become the Soviet Union, China is going to adopt socialism and communism, and so on and so forth. But 1912 Mr. Birling—he's not saying this metaphor thinking of, you know, Lenin or Stalin or someone like that. Instead, he is just thinking about that concept in general: collectivism, and the flaws with the concept of collectivism in general, and how you can't have everybody work together because then there is no structure there.

What's also interesting is before the "like bees in a hive": the "mixed up together." Now, of course, for people to be mixed up together and for you to not be happy about that, you have to originally have not been mixed up. So what he's essentially showing an awareness of there is the class hierarchy: he is showing his awareness and approval of class hierarchy, because what he doesn't like is the idea of that sort of class hierarchy—where you've got the working class at the bottom and the upper class at the top—he doesn't want that being mixed up.

So overall, we can see that his attack on socialism is all centered around the collectivist ideals of social responsibility, working together, losing your autonomy, losing your uniqueness, and losing any sense of social hierarchy. Essentially, he wants everything to be the way it is under individualism, and he doesn't like the concept of socialism at all.

We also get him saying that it's "community and all that nonsense." So obviously that's a very explicit line there of "nonsense" meaning stupid, ridiculous. So we're not going to get a Grade 9 from pointing out that the word "nonsense" suggests he doesn't like socialism. What is much more insightful, though, is to comment on how the word "nonsense," along with "cranks" and "mixed up together like bees in a hive," creates a tone.

And the tone that it creates is of someone who is confident in their opinions, who is assertive with the use of all these declaratives. And he's not hedging it with like, "I think this," or, "Perhaps it could be this"—he's speaking with certainty about his views. So there's a really confident, self-assured tone here that highlights how strongly he feels about his own values.

But again, because this is taken from before the Inspector arrives, it's part of conveying that power and authority that he has. He has his power and authority because of the strength of his beliefs, the certainty of his beliefs, and how he pushes those forward.

Something else that's interesting in this speech is when he says: "I've learnt in the good hard school of experience that a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own—and—(We hear the sharp ring of a front door bell.)"

Now, when Mr. Birling is saying a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own, that's obviously, again, that explicit stating of the individualistic values. What's mega important to spot, though, is the fact that him expressing those views is interrupted. This is the first time he's really been interrupted since the play began, and it's interrupted by the "sharp ring of a front door bell."

Who is ringing that front door bell? The Inspector! And so it's quite literally like this stage direction is a symbolic representation of how the Inspector is about to show up and completely disrupt the confident, clear belief in capitalist values, and it's going to offer a whole other kind of alternative to this system, and it's going to point out: actually, maybe they aren't cranks after all with their beliefs in looking out for one another and all that jazz.

There are other ways that Mr. Birling shows his individualism, too. One is with his use of jargon, specifically business jargon. And we can see that in the quote: "It's my duty to keep labour costs down."

"Labour costs" is obviously business jargon for business profits, the various costs associated with working with a business. But what he's actually talking about with "labour costs" is people, human beings—people and their jobs, their livelihoods. And so with him keeping labor costs down, he's talking about underpaying people, he's talking about firing people, he's talking about exploitative practices, he's talking about prioritizing profit over people.

And so what he does with this jargon is try to distance himself from having to take responsibility for what he has done. So again, this quote is not only about showing his individualistic values; it's also part of how Priestley begins that attack on those values, because it makes him seem incredibly shortsighted, unempathetic, and selfish. The fact that he is prioritizing keeping labor costs down—that business focus over the human focus—especially considering that what he's been told is that a woman killed herself because of all of this.

In addition to the simile of "like bees in a hive," he does also use a metaphor to express his individualistic views. And that metaphor is: "if you don't come down sharply on some of these people, they'd soon be asking for the earth."

I talk about the Inspector's half of this quote in my Inspector video, so I'm not going to focus on that Inspector half here; I'm just going to analyze what Mr. Birling is saying in his end of the quote.

So in the Mr. Birling end of the quote, there's a few things:

First of all, the idea of people "asking for the earth": what does he mean by that? Well, the earth is meant to represent resources: wanting housing, food, opportunities. Essentially, the planet is made up of limited resources, and it's: how much do we share out to the different people? And he's suggesting people are going to want more. It's also a really classic idiom that just generally suggests somebody is asking for too much: the idiom of "asking for the earth" just generally means you're asking for too much of resources.
So what he is doing is he's attacking socialism on the grounds of essentially suggesting others are going to be selfish. So of course there is a huge irony in this metaphor that Priestley wants us to spot, and that the Inspector is going to point out in a second as well: in that he is a wealthy man who essentially has asked for the earth and gotten it, but he also wants to stop others from doing so! So again, it's pointing out the hypocrisy and the selfishness within the concept of individualism, in that the individual can want something for themselves, but then not for others—you know, that idea of: they walk through the door and close it behind them.
What's also interesting is, again, his implicit support for the class system, awareness of and support of the class system in this line: "if you don't come down sharply on some of these people..." So "come down," right? He's showing an awareness of the social hierarchy, and the idea that he is on an upper level of it and therefore he has to come down on them. So that metaphor—it represents not just suppressing and oppressing people and limiting people, but also an awareness of the fact that it is what the upper classes do to the lower classes as well.
And we can combine that with analysis of the connotations of "sharply." "Sharply" connotes two key things: that you do something quickly and strongly. So that would suggest that our middle and upper classes consider the suppression of the working classes to be an incredibly important part of their ideology, because they would want to do it sharply—they want to do it quickly and powerfully.
It's also interesting that he uses the mode of address "these people"—again distancing himself: "They are those people over here; I am me over here." He's creating that constant separation between him and the working classes, really trying to show off his superiority, how supercilious he is. (If you've not heard that word before, check out my video on really sophisticated vocabulary to use in An Inspector Calls essays!)

Now, all of these different values that he is expressing, as I've already mentioned, are really essential to Priestley conveying his whole point of basically: capitalism bad, socialism good. And in that sense, Mr. Birling is not only a symbol of capitalist values, but he is a foil.

A foil is a type of character that is designed to illustrate or reveal information, traits, values, or motivations of one character through the comparison and contrast of another character. In the case of this play, it's the Inspector versus Mr. Birling. We do also get a bit of Mr. Birling versus Eric later on, but for sure the biggest and real significant foil is the Inspector versus Mr. Birling. They are the opposites: while Mr. Birling is all individualism and capitalism, the Inspector is all collectivism and socialism.

That therefore helps to explain why Mr. Birling goes from protagonist to antagonist: because as the Inspector is in the play for longer and longer, and he gets to express these more socialist views, and we see the flaws in capitalist ideology, the audience, along with Sheila and Eric, start shifting around our mindsets to this more "Yeah, collectivism is better, social responsibility is better" kind of mindset. And therefore, as that shift happens, Mr. Birling has the shift from protagonist to antagonist: he loses his power, he loses his authority, and he loses everybody viewing him as the kind of font of all wisdom on these issues.

A key way that Priestley goes about starting that process before the Inspector has even arrived is by basically undermining Mr. Birling's views at every turn. And a key way that he does that is with dramatic irony.

An Inspector Calls was first performed in 1945, despite being set in 1912. That means that our audience in 1945 have a lot of knowledge about the world that Mr. Birling doesn't have, and therefore, when he expresses certain views, the audience is very keenly aware of how wrong he is.

Now, this extract is again taken from before the Inspector arrives, from when Mr. Birling has his multiple big speeches to Eric and Gerald. So, I'm going to read it through, and then we'll talk about all the various different areas where we can see dramatic irony taking place:

"The Titanic—she sails next week—forty-six thousand eight hundred tons—New York in five days—and every luxury—and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable... in 1940—you may be giving a little party like this—your son or daughter might be getting engaged... by that time you'll be living in a world that'll have forgotten all these Capital versus Labour agitations and all these silly little war scares. There'll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere—except of course in Russia, which will always be naturally behindhand... we can't let these Bernard Shaws and H.G. Wellses do all the talking. We hard-headed practical business men must say something sometime. And we don't guess—we've had experience—and we know—"

So, in that opening line, we can immediately see our first case of dramatic irony, can't we? "The Titanic... unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable."

Now, this is one of the most common quotes that students will analyze in an Inspector Calls essay, especially one connected to Mr. Birling. They'll quote the Titanic: "Unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable," and they'll do an analysis of how the dramatic irony shows, you know, he doesn't really know what he's on about, because of course the Titanic did sink. That is all really valid and valuable, but it's said so commonly it's not going to be viewed as perceptive.

So, here's how to get that perceptive angle back into it:

First of all, we come to tone. Again, the repetition of "unsinkable," combined with the adverb "absolutely," creates an incredibly confident tone, which serves to heighten how much the dramatic irony undermines him. Because of course, the more confident you are in your wrongness, the more someone's going to judge you for being wrong.
The second thing is that, actually, for the dramatic irony, it's not just dramatic irony that the Titanic sank: it's also specific dramatic irony about something somebody said about the Titanic. One of the actual builders of the Titanic back in the real 1912 said that the Titanic was unsinkable! And so for our 1945 audience, they're not only having Mr. Birling's authority undermined because they are aware that the Titanic actually did sink; they are being clearly reminded of actual real arrogance and hubris demonstrated by a real person in the real 1912, and how that contributed to this catastrophe.

We also have a very unsubtle comparison: "in 1940 you may be giving a little party like this." Like, just in case, audience, you didn't get that this is supposed to be dramatic irony, let me say the decade you're living in! So just really smash that point down there and make it even more obvious.

And what he's saying is that in 1940, we'll have forgotten "all these Capital versus Labour agitations and all these silly little war scares."

The "Capital versus Labour agitations"—that is alluding to events like the Miners' Strike of 1912, and that was just a huge, huge strike in England of miners fighting for better working conditions, better pay, and things like that. But just generally around the world, we were seeing this sort of fighting back by the working classes: you saw it in Russia, you saw it in the USA, you saw it in Europe, loads of different places. And so it's a common pattern, a common theme of the early 20th century, I would say, was the Capital versus Labour agitations. And again, notice that use of jargon: "Capital," symbolizing the upper classes, the ones with the money, the ones with the power, versus "Labour," the ones that do the work in the factory. Notice again how he's dehumanizing the situation by using that jargon.
He belittles the possibility of there being any kind of war with "silly little war scares," with both the adjectives "silly" and "little" diminishing the power that would normally be connoted by a word like "war" and "scare." Of course, that is all dramatic irony again, because the Great War, World War I, is going to occur in two years' time, and of course World War II a few decades after that.

And another really interesting thing with this speech, in addition to the really confident tone, is how he speaks with such eloquence: "There'll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere—except of course in Russia..." Like this line, and how he has that alliteration, tricolon, and asyndetic list creating what feels like a highly crafted speech, making him seem really well-spoken and eloquent, but at the same time, all of that is being completely undermined because what he's saying is, of course, wrong. There wasn't peace, prosperity, and rapid progress everywhere. Well, some would argue there was rapid progress, but not in the way Mr. Birling would have wanted! And of course, his little dig at Russia there is also backwards, because Russia is going to become the Soviet Union, the biggest country in the world that's going to have far-reaching influence across multiple continents. So he couldn't be more wrong if he tried.

When he says, "we can't let these Bernard Shaws and H.G. Wellses do all the talking," there's three things going on:

First of all, there's the imperative: "we can't."
There's also the first-person plural: "we." So, of course, he's talking to Eric and Gerald, because essentially this whole speech is acting like his big guide for the next generation, how they will continue to progress the capitalist, individualistic society. So by the "we," he's talking about them as wealthy men essentially, and he's reminding them of the power and control they need to have in society, and what they can't do is let the Bernard Shaws and H.G. Wellses do all the talking.
The other thing going on is that Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells—those are real people, so this is an allusion. (And if you don't know what an allusion is, check out my video on that!) Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells were both real people around the time of 1912: they were both writers, and they were both incredibly influential socialists in British society. So they often used their fiction or non-fiction writing to push forward more socialist values. So by alluding to these two names, essentially he's saying, "We can't let socialists do all the talking." But that's the interesting irony again here: "We can't let them do all the talking." So what he's saying at the same time is he's showing an awareness of actually the power that socialists do have in British society, and he's saying we almost need to take back that power from them. So he's very aware of an almost ideological battle, but he seems to be naive to how serious this ideological battle really is.

The key thing about this dramatic irony—and why I've put those three little dots (sorry, I forgot to say, is where I've just cut a little bit of the text out so we can condense together the more relevant bits)—the reason why I've put the Titanic bit right next to the "given a little party" bit is: one of the key things about the dramatic irony is not just that it exists, but how frequently it exists and how close together. He says wrong things about the Titanic, the war, Russia, the Capital/Labour agitations, all really, really close together. So it almost creates like a mounting effect on our audience of: undermine, undermine, undermine... until by the time he says, "We don't guess—we've had experience—and we know," he sounds like the most arrogant and ridiculous man in the world, and that is completely on purpose.

Mr. Birling has hubris. Hubris is a character trait that features excessive pride or inflated self-confidence, leading a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or violate an important moral law. The extreme pride or arrogance of hubris often consumes a character, blinding them to reason and resulting in their ultimate downfall.

I mean, Mr. Birling in two sentences, right?

Mr. Birling's excessive pride and inflated self-confidence is really what we see in those early stages of the play, leading him to disregard a divine warning. Now, "divine" in this context and in literary devices' definition is like God, because hubris was typically used in like Greek dramas and things like that, so it could be like a god's warning. However, there is still room to argue that there is a kind of divine warning maybe in this, because there is the question of: what is the Inspector? He's obviously not a real inspector. But even just not divine warning: political warning, social warning about the fact that he is violating an important moral law of social responsibility—he is not being responsible for others and caring for others.

And that extreme pride and arrogance blinds him to reason, so he is the one who fails to change. (And I'm going to teach you a technique linked to that in a little bit.) And absolutely, that failure to change is his downfall. And the reason it's his downfall also links to the concept of a time play.

The key point is that An Inspector Calls is a time play, and one of the time theories that Priestley was interested in was the one that if you fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, you're doomed to repeat them. And because Mr. Birling is blinded to reason, he has a downfall of being made to repeat the investigation: the play ends with them getting the phone call and, you know, there's the suggestion they're going to have to go through the investigation again. (Which reminds me: if you do need more help with the ending of An Inspector Calls, I've got a video on that, too!)

Now, this hubris is there from the very beginning of the play: it enhances and develops as the play goes on, and we see just how strong his hubris is as he keeps refusing to change, but it is undoubtedly there from the very beginning. And that is clear from the staging that Priestley wrote.

Before anybody even speaks, you get this description of Arthur Birling:

"Arthur Birling is a heavy-looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in his speech."

Now, I'm going to start by defining "portentous" and "provincial" using the good old Collins Dictionary:

Portentous: If someone's way of speaking, writing, or behaving is portentous, they speak, write, or behave more seriously than necessary because they want to impress other people. Remember what I said about how eloquent he sounds with the "peace and prosperity and rapid progress"? That's him being portentous.
He's also provincial: If you describe someone or something as provincial, you disapprove of them because you think they are old-fashioned and boring. So this fits with the idea that Mr. Birling is essentially stuck in his ways, right? He's going to refuse to change and to progress, and that is part of what makes him provincial. However, the fact that this is worded as "provincial in his speech" means the definition that Priestley intended is more likely to be another kind, which is that a provincial is someone who comes from a part of a country away from the capital city. So his accent is not a sort of London, southern, posh accent. Interestingly, in the BBC production, they gave him, I think it was a Scottish accent—they gave him, again, just to create that sense of, you know, he's less likely to actually have been born middle class; he's definitely someone who made it up and then closed the door behind him, again creating that irony of his individualistic selfishness there. Whatever accent Mr. Birling has—it may be northern, it may be Welsh—it just has to not be posh; it can't be like the aristocracy and the Queen and all that kind of stuff.

So this staging is really important because these are Priestley's instructions for the actor: this is what Priestley wanted the actor to look like and act like. And so he wanted the actor to convey in their body language, in their gestures, in their tone, everything: that arrogance, that hubris of a man desperate to impress, possibly because of insecurity of the fact that he's "new money"—he doesn't come from blue blood.

As well as this staging, we see that desperation for him to impress in things that he says as well. Have a look at these quotes here: we've got a pattern here of quotes I've taken from mainly the beginning before the Inspector arrives, but there's also much later in the play as well:

"How do you get on with our Chief Constable, Colonel Roberts?... Perhaps I ought to warn you that he’s an old friend of mine..."
"It's exactly the same port your father gets."
"You're just the kind of son-in-law I always wanted... your father and I have been friendly rivals... now you've brought us together..."
"Look, Inspector—I'd give thousands—yes, thousands—"
"There’s a fair chance that I might find my way into the next Honours List. Just a knighthood, of course."

Crafting-wise, what we have to ask ourselves here is: what does Chief Constable Colonel Roberts represent? What does the port represent? What does Gerald represent to Mr. Birling? What do thousands of pounds represent? What does a knighthood represent?

Because, essentially, Mr. Birling is obsessed with money and power: gaining it and protecting it. And so all of those different things represent money and power in some kind of way. That fits with his hubris in terms of wanting to impress. It also fits with his capitalist values of individualism, and also perhaps pointing out another critique of individualism: in that you don't truly do things as an individual; you do things by marrying your friendly rival and having friends in high places—you don't actually do it alone!

But also, it helps to really make us see where Mr. Birling's values lie. And his values lie in reputation and social standing. He doesn't truly care about other people unless it's about how other people view him and perceive him, and he wants to be perceived positively. So he gets the same port as Gerald's father because he wants to behave in the way the upper classes do; he wants to have a knighthood because that would make him, like, almost officially part of the upper classes; he wants to give loads of money in order to suppress bad things and hide bad things that he's done. He is all about protecting power and money over human life. And of course, that is part of what Priestley is attacking in those capitalist values.

Another really important part of how Priestley achieves his attack on capitalist values is via anagnorisis. Now, anagnorisis is a dramatic device whereby a character begins to understand their faults and the cause of their downfall.

Here's the thing, though: Eric and Sheila experience anagnorisis; Mr. and Mrs. Birling do not. So in the case of those two, we're able to analyze that contrast: why do Eric and Sheila experience it, while Mr. and Mrs. Birling don't?

And this little conversation extract here that I've got for you kind of shows an example of why that is:

Eric: "It's still the same rotten story whether it’s been told to a police inspector or to somebody else... The money's not the important thing. It's what happened to the girl and what we all did to her that matters."

Sheila: "Eric's absolutely right. And it's the best thing any one of us has said tonight and it makes me feel a bit less ashamed of us. You're just beginning to pretend all over again."

Birling: "Look—for God's sake—"

Mrs. Birling: "(warningly) Arthur!"

Birling: "Well, my dear, they're so damned exasperating. They just won't try to understand our position or to see the difference between a lot of stuff like this coming out in private and a downright public scandal."

Do you remember what I said about how to him public reputation is everything? He just outright says it there!

Now, this lack of anagnorisis from Mr. and Mrs. Birling, in addition to the hubris, is a big part of why they have that downfall of the phone call at the end: they don't change, they don't learn, and therefore they have to have the downfall.

Priestley is also trying to make a point linked to capitalism about the older generation, because one of the themes of An Inspector Calls, alongside class and social responsibility and all that, is the difference between the younger and older generations—the generational conflict is how I word it. Generational conflict basically just means the generations aren't agreeing with each other. And we have that here, as Eric and Sheila are recognizing the importance of having moral integrity and moral responsibility regardless of what the law says, regardless of what the rest of society says; whereas for Mr. and Mrs. Birling, if the law says it's fine, play on, regardless of how immoral it may actually be!

So with our older generation, by not having them experience anagnorisis, Priestley is essentially pointing out how obstinate they are. That means, like, someone who's really stuck in their ways and refuses to change and can't be persuaded. On the other hand, the younger generation are able to change: Eric and Sheila, especially Sheila, change a lot over the course of this play, and we see how they grow and mature as people, which makes their parents just seem ridiculous, really—more immature almost, because of their refusal to recognize the clear ethical and moral issues around what they did to Eva.

You've also got the fact that, in addition to being a time play, An Inspector Calls is also a morality play.

Now, a morality play is a type of allegorical drama. That means everything happening—all of the characters, all of the events—are all a giant symbol of something else. And in the case of a morality play, all of the characters have inherent weaknesses that are allegories for the seven deadly sins. So there'll be someone who's greedy, someone who is too proud, somebody who is lusting too much, and they'll all have the different kind of deadly sins.

Now, this was a type of play that was really popular back in the Middle Ages when people were really, really religious, so it had a big religious messaging to it—that's why it's so focused on, like, the seven deadly sins. An Inspector Calls is also a morality play where Mr. Birling is symbolizing greed. And so, we can see from Mr. Birling and his greed that the goal for Priestley is to teach the audience a lesson: why you shouldn't be greedy and selfish, and kind of the consequences of greed and the consequences of selfishness.

Of course, unlike the Middle Ages origins of this genre of play, Priestley's goal is not religious: his goal is not to be like, you know, "You need to follow the Bible better, or follow God's way better." His goal is political! His goal is to make us see how greed and selfishness don't fit with a good society, and capitalist society is all about greed and selfishness, and therefore we all need to go and be more socialist, basically. So it's much more of a political view that he's pushing rather than a religious one.

That being said, there is no denying it is a morality play: Mr. Birling is not just a symbol of capitalist values; he's also a symbol of greed. But then those two are also closely tied together, because Priestley is trying to say: capitalists are greedy.

Analysis of Mr Birling

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