Analysis Of The Inspector

Inspector Goole is the central catalyst of Priestley’s play, functioning far beyond a standard dramatic detective. Analysing his character effectively requires looking past what he says to focus on how he says it and what he represents. This lesson is applicable to all GCSE exam boards and is designed to equip you with sophisticated terminology and close-analysis techniques for your Inspector essays.

We’ll explore Goole's structural role as both protagonist and antagonist, examining how Priestley utilizes stage directions, blunt language, and controlled conversation dynamics to establish authority on stage. I’ll also walk you through high-level analysis of key linguistic and dramatic techniques (including symbolism, extended metaphors, dramatic irony, and his function as a foil to the Birling family) giving you plenty of concrete evidence to elevate your essays.

Timestamp
0:00 Antagonist and Protagonist
2:15 Stage directions
4:40 Conversation terminology
9:08 Sentence Moods
12:49 Blunt Language
17:09 Symbolism
20:14 Metaphor
24:11 Listing
32:24 Dramatic Irony
43:53 Foil

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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:

I'll start off by talking about an overarching structural technique that's going on in this play, and then I want to break down how that structural technique is created by a bunch of different other techniques, but also why this is happening.

Now, the big overarching structural technique you can already see is that the Inspector shifts from being an antagonist to a protagonist. So let's start by just clarifying those terms:

• The protagonist is like the first or leading actor, the main character in the play.

• And then the antagonist is the principal opponent or foil of the main character.

The reason I'm saying that the Inspector starts off as the antagonist is because he's not in the play from the very beginning. Instead, it's Mr. Birling who gets to set himself up as the main character: because of how much he talks, because of how much he seems to be, you know, the patriarch of the family, how in control he is, how confident he is. He is set up as the main character.

Then in comes the Inspector, and they start clashing all over the place. And so it's like the Inspector is the opponent of Mr. Birling, and they start to clash. However, as the play goes on, there's a bit of a change there, because actually what happens is we start to view—we as the audience start to view—Mr. Birling as the antagonist and the Inspector as the main character, the protagonist.

And like I said, I'm going to go through all the different ways that that shift is created, because there's a whole host of different techniques making that happen.

The first technique of which is stage directions. I forgot to say, by the way: I've put in the top corner—I can never point in the right direction!—I've put in the top corner in green whether the technique I'm talking about is language, structure, or form. So you can see so far we've talked about structure, and we're about to talk about a form device. So just pay attention to that, because, of course, in the essays or the coursework that you write, you want to make sure you are analyzing a range of devices. So you don't just want to go away from today just analyzing the structure ones I talk about, or just analyzing the language; you want a mix of them all.

By and large, you always want to be analyzing stage directions, because I'm pretty sure every single exam board for English literature mentions wanting you to analyze form. So that means techniques only found in plays, and for An Inspector Calls, stage directions are your best technique to look at there.

Going back to actually talking about those stage directions: what you can see here is a collection of stage directions taken from across An Inspector Calls that are all used to describe the Inspector. The "cutting in massively" one in particular is used in that exact phrasing multiple times as well. Can you see the pattern in the language across these quotes? Because, of course, that is one of the keys to getting a Grade 9 in our analysis: pattern spotting and analyzing patterns.

So we've got:

• "...an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness."

• "...cutting in, massively..."

• "The Inspector interposes himself between them and the photograph..."

• "...taking charge, masterfully."

• "...coolly, looking hard at him."

Do you see that pattern? Do you see how they all have, in their different ways—of the different pieces of language amongst them—they connote power, confidence, authority, all of that, right?

And so one of the ways that the Inspector ends up shifting from antagonist to protagonist: you know how I said before the Inspector arrived, Mr. Birling was in charge, in control, was, you know, he was the patriarch? That power balance changes once the Inspector arrives, and this is—pointing in the wrong way again!—this is some of our evidence of that. The Inspector is filled with power and authority and control, as demonstrated by his stage directions.

It's also demonstrated by the use of conversation terminology. Now, I'm about to teach you three techniques that odds are you haven't heard of before, okay? Now, the reason you probably haven't heard of them before is because they're actually A-Level English Language terminology. And A-Level English Language—it depends on the exam boards, but at least in one of them—you analyze the power dynamics in conversation, like real-life conversation: how the way that we talk to one another shows our power and our relationship with the person that we're talking to. So like the way that you would speak differently to your best friend versus your teacher versus the headteacher, that kind of thing.

Anyway, there are three terms I want to teach you, and those are:

1. Topic management

2. Turn-taking

3. Back-channeling

Now, topic management is who decides what gets talked about and how, with the basic idea being: if you're the person in the conversation deciding what is being talked about, you're the one in control, you're the one with the power.

Same goes with turn-taking: who speaks the most or least in the conversation? If you're the one doing all the talking, it's like a power sign; you're the one in control.

And then back-channeling: words used to show that you are listening and agree. So that's things like, "Uh-huh," "Yeah, you're right"—those kinds of phrases that we say to indicate to somebody we're listening to them, we agree with what they're saying. That, obviously, again indicates relationship in that, you know, you're agreeing with one another, your ideas, your values are aligned in that moment.

So why are these significant for the Inspector? Well, before the Inspector arrives, guess who topic manages? That's the way you would phrase it in a sentence, by the way: who is doing the topic managing? Mr. Birling! Mr. Birling—go have a look in the play if you don't believe me. Mr. Birling is the one who really heavily steers the conversation. Now, don't get me wrong, there's some higher-level analysis you can do of how Mrs. Birling subtly steers conversation because she can't overtly do so because she's a woman, but that's a whole other video conversation. Mr. Birling is the one who manages conversation, Mr. Birling is the one who speaks the most, and Eric and Sheila and Gerald back-channel Mr. Birling. They all agree and align with Mr. Birling.

The Inspector rocks up; suddenly, he is the one that topic manages. Think about how he controls the order of his investigation: he's the one saying, "You tell me what happened. Now you tell me what happened. Now you tell me what happened."

Right now, with turn-taking, arguably he's not the one who talks the most, because, of course, whoever is being interrogated in that moment, they're the one who talks the most. So when it's Sheila's turn to be interrogated, she is the one who talks the most. However, if you think about the play as a whole, the investigation as a whole, he is the common denominator in terms of being, like, second-highest the whole way through. When he's done with Mr. Birling, he's like, "Okay, you shush; Sheila, you speak." And so it's like they are only speaking the most because he allows them to speak the most. His topic management is so strong that, essentially, he also controls the turn-taking as well. And that's, again, a huge sign of his power and his authority.

What's also interesting, as we get towards the later stages of his investigation, while Sheila and Eric start to change, they start to back-channel the Inspector, not Mr. Birling. So they used to back-channel Mr. Birling, and then they shift to back-channeling the Inspector:

• Sheila agrees with the Inspector—you know, "they're not labour, they're people"—explicitly disagreeing with her father.

• Eric starts to agree with him, saying, you know, that the police officer wasn't the point: "what we did was the point."

There's loads of back-channeling going on there. So the fact that the Inspector becomes the one who is back-channeled—don't get me wrong, it doesn't convert everybody; Mrs. Birling and Mr. Birling kind of never change and turn to his side—but the fact that the back-channeling shifts away from Mr. Birling onto him is, again, part of that shift of: he is now the main character. He is the one in control. He is the one driving this story forward. Him and the narrative about Eva are what are really the main lead actor here. He is the one that is most important; it's no longer Mr. Birling.

Another way that he shows his power and authority is with his sentence mood. Now, the reason sentence moods are significant for the Inspector is they are a key way of how he exerts his power during the investigation, specifically with imperatives and declaratives. And we can see that in these quotes:

• Stage directions: "As Birling tries to protest, the Inspector turns on him." / "Don't stammer and yammer at me again, man. I'm losing all patience with you people."

• "Stop! And be quiet for a moment and listen to me."

• Mr. Birling says, "We should be along in a minute now. Just finishing." And the Inspector says, "I'm afraid not."

Let's think about this for a second. Okay, so first of all, you've got all those imperative sentences. You've got the commands in things like, "Don't stammer and yammer at me," "Stop," "Be quiet," "Listen to me." He really takes charge in the room. So you're again able to analyze that pattern of how common—because these are taken again from across the investigation—how common imperative sentences are really shows the command and control that he has in the room.

You've also got really interesting uses of declarative sentences, particularly like short declarative sentences. Birling's like, "Oh yeah, we should be along in a minute now, just finishing." "I'm afraid not." Just: "I don't care what you are doing, you're done." But he doesn't do it in a command way—just informing him: "No, you're done. I'm afraid not. No, it's not going to happen." Love it.

You then also have things like, "I'm losing all patience with you people." Like that declarative there of being so just like he's talking to children, almost. He's very much about blunt, short declaratives that express his displeasure with something a character is doing, but also make it clear he is the one in control.

There are some other examples that I haven't put in here, but one that I kind of now wish I had is a brilliant one where—I think it's in Sheila's investigation—he's not asking her questions; he's making declaratives that should almost be questions. So it's like instead of asking, "Do you remember her?", it's: "You remember her now, don't you?" And he phrases things as declaratives because it shows that confidence and that certainty in what he's doing and the way he's doing it.

I also quickly want to talk about another technique, actually, called mode of address. Now, mode of address refers to the names that we call one another, and what, again, that says about our power and about our relationships with one another. And I think this top quote is great for that as well. So first of all, you've got him calling Mr. Birling "man," and then him calling the Birling family in general "you people." So that's the mode of address there: the mode of address "man," and the mode of address "you people."

Now, those are really interesting for two reasons: number one, the lack of respect that they show. And that lack of respect is significant when we remember the power dynamics here should be that a police inspector would show a lot of deference—that means a lot of like respect and politeness—to an upper-middle-class family like the Birlings that are as highly connected and wealthy as the Birlings. But instead, he's calling them "man" and "you people."

Everything we've looked at so far, just to quickly summarize where we're at, are all a bunch of different techniques that help to show the Inspector's power and authority, which is a key way of how he shifts from being an antagonist to a protagonist. He becomes the main character because he takes charge; he takes control.

The final way that I want to look at that he does that is with blunt language. Those of you who are British will already know this; those of you who are not British, but, I don't know, have heard stereotypes about the British or know British people, will probably be nodding like, "Yep, I know this to be true, too." And that is that the British are not a blunt people. There is a reason we are so darn good at sarcasm and euphemisms, and that is because we don't say what we really mean, we don't say what we really feel. It's like, have you seen those memes where it's like "What a British person says versus what a British person actually means," and it's like, you know, we say something's "quite nice," and that means we hate it and it's disgusting? British people are not explicit, we're not to the point; we're so obsessed with being polite and not hurting feelings that we skate around what we're trying to say.

The Inspector does not do any of that, and therefore he uses this technique of blunt language. Just have a look at these two quotes:

• "A girl died tonight. A pretty, lively sort of girl, who never did anybody any harm. But she died in misery and agony—hating life—"

• Stage direction: "(very sternly)" / "Her position now is that she lies with a burnt-out inside on a slab."

It's so to the point, it's so harsh, it's so un-British—especially when we consider we're not even dealing with 2021 British people who I like to think have become a bit more open and able to talk about our feelings. We are dealing with the war generations—well, no, not even that: before the war generations, we're closer to dealing with the Victorians! Those are people who really didn't talk about anything real in explicit language. The way that the Inspector is talking right now, I cannot stress this enough: for our 1945 audience would be like, "Whoa, that's some harsh language there." For our 1912 Birling family, it's like: [gasp!].

And that is a really deliberate part by Priestley: it's part of how he has the Inspector exert his power, is by almost shocking the Birling family with how honest and brutal he is. And also, to be honest, it's kind of something we come to like about him. The fact that he is truthful and honest—like, compared to the Birling family who are all about euphemistic language ("it's my duty to keep labor costs down") and full of excuses and full of utter rubbish—we come to actually prefer the honesty of the Inspector, and that is done with this blunt language.

And part of what makes it blunt language is also things like the graphic imagery in "burnt-out inside on a slab." That graphic imagery there—and the imagery, of course, just refers to any technique that's creating a picture in our reader's mind—so we're really being forced to visualize the suffering and pain that Eva went through.

And you've also got: "she died in misery and agony." Now, I really like the juxtaposition of those two, because, of course, misery is your emotions, how you're feeling: she was incredibly sad, she was depressed. Agony is physical: it's your pain, the physical pain that you're feeling, and is a really, really strong level of physical pain. Within this blunt language—actually, also within just the short, blunt declarative sentences: "A girl died tonight"—loads of short declaratives here that really just add to that bluntness. The misery and the agony, and the juxtaposition between that emotional pain and physical pain creating a sense of just how all-consuming and painful her life was, is really powerful in conveying the suffering that Eva went through, and being really blunt and powerful in terms of the Inspector exerting his power in the Birling family.

This also leads me on to the second reason, the second big reason why the Inspector shifts from being an antagonist to a protagonist. So the first reason we've looked at is the fact that he exerts all that power: he takes charge, he becomes like the main character driving the story forward. That's part one.

Part two—and I'll leave it up to you to debate which one is more important here—part two is the fact that he is also a symbol of socialist values. Now, the reason I've said this is a structural device is because he is a character symbol across the play as a whole. Symbolism can obviously be a language technique if you're dealing with, like, one symbol in one sentence, but because it's a whole-play decision that really affects the way the story is told, I'm calling it a structural device here.

The fact that the Inspector symbolizes socialist values is another reason, because, of course, one of Priestley's goals, one of his biggest goals with An Inspector Calls, was to make the audience see the harms that capitalism creates, and also to suggest that a more socialist future would be better for Britain. And therefore, he needs to shift the Inspector to become the protagonist, while Mr. Birling, our strong capitalist, goes from being main character to actually the foil, the antagonist. I've just realized I've used the term "foil" a couple times now and I haven't explained it—don't worry, it is the very last technique I talk about in this video, so I will cover foil.

Now, when it comes to the Inspector being a symbol of socialist values, Priestley doesn't look at all aspects of socialism. Socialism is an incredibly complex and large political ideology. One of the mistakes that students make is they just use the term "socialism," like: "Yeah, he's pushing socialism, he's pushing socialism." It's not that simple, it's not that straightforward. He focuses his attention on two specific values within socialism, and those two values are collectivism and social responsibility:

• Collectivism is the practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it (and I just got that definition off of Google).

• And social responsibility is the idea that everyone in society has a responsibility to look after one another (and I got that definition from me!).

These are the two big ones that he looks at: collectivism and social responsibility. This is really important for you to remember again, because when we're trying to push for those Grade 9s in our exams and in our coursework, we don't want to have that simplistic outlook of "all socialism is talked about." He's not talking about nationalizing production, he is not talking about big government or anything like that; he is focusing much more on the down-on-society level: how we behave with one another, how we interact with one another.

So a really important thing that you can do is you can be clear about that, and you can actually, rather than constantly using the word "socialism," you can be more specific and use the term "collectivism," which is the noun. If you want to talk about a person that believes in collectivism, you call them a collectivist. So the Inspector is a collectivist. And also the fact that social responsibility is a key theme of this play, and he's totally trying to push that we need to have more social responsibility in the play as a whole.

Now again, in terms of him being a symbol of those socialist values, there are a bunch of different techniques that go into creating that sense. One of which is metaphors:

Birling: "...if you don't come down sharply on some of these people, they'd soon be asking for the earth."

Inspector: "They might. But after all, it's better to ask for the earth than to take it."

So if we start off with Mr. Birling's metaphor, and then we'll look at how the Inspector flips it: "come down sharply on some of these people." Now, I'm going to end up treading here on a little bit of analysis of Mr. Birling and his values, but that's also kind of necessary, because, of course, they're becoming a contrast to one another, and this really highlights that as well.

"Come down sharply": so let's think about that metaphor for a moment. For you to "come down" on someone, it connotes a sense of superiority: you're coming from above, you're coming down on them, okay? So it shows his inherent awareness and belief in the hierarchy of society, and the need for those at the top to keep control over those at the bottom. That is, of course, something that socialism is against in the idea of everybody being equal, versus a capitalist society is much more accepting of, because, again, depending on your exact political beliefs, capitalism is also a lot more complex than a lot of students really acknowledge. But let's say, for example, you are a capitalist who believes in meritocracy: if you've done well in life, of course you're going to do better than somebody else, and that is what's right because you worked hard and made a success of your business and they didn't, and so you deserve to be above them, blah blah blah. Point is: it is showing an awareness of that hierarchy.

"They'd soon be asking for the earth." Now, what exactly "the earth" represents: he could mean, you know, they'd be asking for a lot of money, they'd be asking for, I don't know, food, housing—it's not clear what exactly he's suggesting they're asking for, but the general idea is it's asking for resources. They're asking for more in society. So "the earth" represents the finite resources we have in our society, and how those resources are shared out amongst us all in society. That is the basic—in a really simplified way—that's the crux of every political ideology ever: you know, we've got X amount, how do we share that out amongst ourselves? What's the right way to share that out amongst ourselves? And so he uses "the earth" to represent that.

Now, the fact that he uses the earth to represent that, number one, shows that he thinks they're asking for a huge amount, because, you know, the earth be big! But also, perhaps, that they're asking for a wide range of things because of the variety of the earth, and also "asking for the earth" is just a classic British idiom to mean "too much" as well. So there's a few different layers that you can analyze to that.

Then the Inspector flips it: "It's better to ask for the earth than to take it." What he flips is the verb in the metaphor, okay? "Ask" has connotations of showing respect, showing consideration for somebody else. "Take"—none of that; there's a connotation of selfishness there. So what he's doing is he's flipping that metaphor to suggest that what capitalists do is just take: they have no consideration for others, they take too much. Think about all those ideas of what we said the earth represents still apply, but now capitalists are the ones just taking it, and they shouldn't. Meanwhile, it's actually all right to have a conversation, to ask, to discuss; that's okay. And so via this metaphor, what the Inspector is able to do is essentially argue against capitalism: capitalists just take, they are selfish, they own too much of the world's resources, while also putting forward a little bit of an idea of collectivism here in that, you know, it's perfectly acceptable for us to talk as a group, to ask one another, and all that kind of stuff.

The next technique I want to talk about is listing. There's a few different ways you can list: there's asyndetic listing, syndetic listing, and there's tricolon. And we're going to see two of those three in these quotes, and then also the third later on as well. So if you don't know what those terms mean, don't worry, we're going to explain them in a second.

I'll start off with this first quote. In both of these, he's talking about Eva; listing is really powerfully used, again, for those kinds of pushing those socialist values. So if we have a look at this:

"With no work, no money coming in, and living in lodgings, with no relatives to help her, few friends, lonely, half-starved, she was feeling desperate... There are a lot of young women living that sort of existence in every city and big town in this country, Miss Birling. If there weren't, the factories and warehouses wouldn't know where to look for cheap labour. Ask your father."

Lots to unpack in this brilliant quote! So first of all, I'll start with the list, because that's what we said we're here for: "no work, no money coming in, living in lodgings, with no relatives to help her, few friends, lonely, half-starved..." So first of all, we would call this an asyndetic list. Now, I've just realized I should have written that out, because "asyndetic" is not an easy one to spell just from me saying it. One second... Ta-da! Like magic!

So this is an asyndetic list. That means each item in the list is not connected with the word "and"; it's just connected with commas instead. The reason that writers will do that is the effect it has on the language in the list: it creates an almost like steamroller effect—it just keeps going, and keeps going, and keeps going. And that is, of course, also the case here, because it's such a long list as well: "no work, no money coming in, living in lodgings, no relatives to help her, few friends, lonely, half-starved..." Do you hear that momentum building because of the commas? So it's almost like the speed, the effect that it has on pace as you're reading it.

But the other key to an asyndetic list is in the language itself. So if we look at the language itself: first of all, you've got that repetition of "no"—"no money," "no work," "no relatives." That's really emphasizing the lack of in her life, right? It's rather than just saying "unemployed," it's "no work." Instead of just saying, I don't know, "poor," it's "no money." It's putting the emphasis on the lack of resources that she has.

You also, whenever you're analyzing a list, you want to look at the range in a list and what that range can symbolize. So if we have a look at what we've got here:

• We've got work and money: livelihood. (I guess you could also argue lodgings is part of that, but I've put that in a separate category of housing.)

• You've then got social life: few friends, no relatives.

• You've then got mental health: lonely. (You could perhaps put lonely into the social life as well, I guess.)

• And then you've also got her basic physical needs: half-starved, she's going hungry as well.

I completely butchered the circling of all of those, but the key point is the way that I've kind of grouped them. You've got a huge range there in the different ways that Eva is suffering. So that combination of the range of ways she's suffering with the asyndetic list is really powerful in conveying how much has been taken from her.

That is then, of course, juxtaposed against the techniques we talked about earlier: the blunt language, the declarative sentences, the imperatives:

• "There are a lot of young women living that sort of existence in every city and big town in this country..." — very to the point, very blunt about the problems that Britain has in 1912.

• "If there weren't, the factories and warehouses wouldn't know where to look for cheap labour." — first of all, we've seen that phrase "cheap labour" before. Well, no, he didn't say "cheap labour"; he said "keep labour costs down." That's right: that is referring to something that Mr. Birling said earlier about it being his duty to keep labor costs down. So what, essentially, the Inspector is again doing here is: he is not only talking about the plight of Eva, but he is placing responsibility for that plight on the backs of these selfish capitalists. So the factories and warehouses symbolize business commerce, particularly the kind that exploit the working classes in this kind of time period. And then, obviously, the reference to "labour" there: it's that mode of address of referring to them with business jargon, as if they are—you know, dehumanizing them. They're no longer people; they are just business jargon.

• And then just that short, blunt imperative there: oh my goodness, "Ask your father." It's made personal now: this is what Mr. Birling does.

The listing is used as part of essentially an attack on the harms that capitalism causes.

I've got one more example for you of the listing here, and this time the Inspector is speaking to Mrs. Birling—still talking about Eva, though—and he says:

"She was here alone, friendless, almost penniless, desperate. She needed not only money, but advice, sympathy, friendliness. You've had children. You must have known what she was feeling. And you slammed the door in her face."

Now, this quote is interesting because, while the one before with the reference to Mr. Birling was very much about the way that people are exploited for profit, here it's much more about the lack of social responsibility, right? The lack of looking out for one another. And listing plays a part in that.

So, first of all, you've again got an asyndetic list: "She was here alone, friendless, almost penniless, desperate." So just as we already analyzed with the one before, you've got that range as well: "alone" and "friendless"—her isolation; "penniless"—lack of money; "desperate"—her mental state. So the listing there is really part of just emphasizing the desperation of Eva.

That is then followed and contrasted with a tricolon: "advice, sympathy, friendliness." And again, notice that range there: advice, sympathy, friendliness. Those are very slightly different things: it's like help, support, kindness, that kind of thing. So that tricolon is designed to sit as a direct contrast to the asyndetic list above it:

• Versus "alone" and "friendless", you've got "friendliness."

• Versus "almost penniless" and "desperate", you've got "advice" and "sympathy."

So it's that idea of: here's what she didn't have, here's what she actually needed. And I think that part of the reason that he chooses to go tricolon with what she needed versus a longer asyndetic list with what she was lacking is that, by making what she needed shorter, it has the effect of also making it seem like it's not that much. You know, it's like if I said to you, "I need this, this, this, this, this, this, and this," and you said to me, "Great, I can give it to you with this, this, and this." It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Like it's such a short amount, small amount needed compared to the amount I was lacking. And I think that's part of why he goes for that shorter tricolon there.

You've also got a brilliant use of metaphor there as well in: "you slammed the door in her face." So I'm just briefly going to talk about that, because we've already mentioned metaphor. Of course, doors typically symbolize opportunity, welcoming somebody perhaps as well. So the slamming the door in her face is not only refusing to give help, but kind of keeping her shut out, blocking her from opportunity as well. So that metaphor again, and this whole quote again, is that attack on the lack of social responsibility that those with more capitalist values have.

Two techniques left that I want to talk to you about. One is a big one, and then one will be really quick.

This is the big one: dramatic irony, because I want to talk to you about the Inspector's final speech. If you're one of the people that's studying An Inspector Calls for an exam—oh, and you don't get to bring a copy of the text into the exam with you—one of my biggest recommendations is memorizing the majority of the Inspector's final speech. It is so rich linguistically—that means, like, with language—that it's a dream for analysis, and plus it works for a bunch of different essays: for, you know, themes of class, themes of social responsibility, the character of the Inspector. It works for a bunch of different things. So if you're having to memorize quotes for the exam, I really recommend, even though it's big, I recommend this being one of them.

Just FYI, slightly off-topic, but I also recommend Mr. Birling's first big speech being another one as well, and you can have a look at my video on Mr. Birling key quotes to see what exactly I recommend memorizing there. But if you have this and Mr. Birling's big one, man, that gives you a lot to analyze for a lot of potential questions.

Anyway, so let's talk about this final speech, then. Because yes, it's got the new technique I'm going to talk about of dramatic irony, but it's also got a bunch of the other techniques that I have already talked about, and I want to convey here.

Again, it starts off with an imperative: "Just remember this." That is, of course, showing that even as he's about to leave, our Inspector has maintained his power. He is exuding that power via his commands before he goes as well.

He then says:

"One Eva Smith has gone—but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, and what we think and say and do."

There is so much to analyze in that line, I can't even! So let's start with talking about: "One Eva Smith has gone, but there are millions and millions and millions..." There's two things going on here:

1. Number one is repetition: repetition of "millions and millions and millions."

2. Also a syndetic list. So you know how before I told you about an asyndetic list? Cut the letter 'A' off the front to create syndetic list, and that is a list where each item in the list is connected with the word "and": something and something and something.

The reason that that is significant: loads of effects being created. First of all, "million" is a really large number, but the goal here is essentially to stress scale: how large a scale of problem this is. And so the repetition of "millions" does that by creating that additional sense of numbers. The mounting numbers is the syndetic list, because that's the effect: while asyndetic lists are about pace—it just keeps going on and on and on—syndetic lists are all about mounting pressure: it's this, and it's this, and it's this, and it's this. That syndetic list and that repetition of "millions" are all about stressing the scale.

And we're told it's "millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us." The Eva Smiths and the John Smiths are serving as symbols: Eva Smith and John Smith. Now, John Smith is a name classically used in Britain to be like a generic name for someone when we don't know their name, kind of like in America they do John Doe and Jane Doe; we do John Smith. It also happily works out with Eva Smith as well. Although part of the reason he gave Eva the surname Smith was because it's such a common British surname, so he just wanted something that sounded really common and everyday. And, of course, the reason they are two different genders: Eva Smith is symbolizing your working-class women; John Smith is symbolizing your working-class men. Those two names serve to symbolize your everyday working-class people. So when we add that to our "millions and millions and millions," he's essentially saying there are loads of working-class people in Britain. That's what he's saying so far.

"...with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness..." This list here is interesting. You've got "their hopes and their fears": that juxtaposition, your hopes versus your fears, so it's like the best and the worst. "The suffering and chance of happiness": worst and the best, he puts right next to each other. "Their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness." And what he's essentially about to say in a second is: those things are all intertwined with us as a society and how we choose to behave. By putting those two words and the connotations that they have of a happy, a positive, and a negative life experience, he's essentially saying: whether the working classes have a good or bad life is going to come down to the actions that we take as a society. So yeah, the suffering and the chance of happiness, the hopes and fears, are all right next to each other, being juxtaposed against one another.

You then have that immediately followed with the metaphor of "intertwined with our lives." The connotations of something being intertwined is like you are involved with one another and you can't undo that. And so that's essentially his collectivism there, right? We are a group. We all are caught up in one another's lives, and we can't stop that.

And he then continues that metaphor: "intertwined with our lives, and what we think and say and do." So a tricolon that I absolutely would analyze as the priority here: this is a tricolon, and again a syndetic list where both are creating an effect.

So if we start by analyzing the tricolon: "think, say, do." Think about what those actions represent:

• "Think": your mind.

• "Say": what you say.

• "Do": your physical actions.

So it's like he's trying to say every part of how we engage with society: "think" we can think of as perhaps symbolizing our values, our beliefs; what we "say" and "do" is like our actions, the way we talk to one another, but also how we physically engage with one another. Everything we do in society is tied up, intertwined—think of that metaphor—with everybody else. So that collectivism, that social responsibility, and because of that, we have control over each other's hopes, fears, suffering, happiness. We have the say in whether somebody's going to have a good life or a terrible life. And so this is essentially a huge socialist argument that he's making here of why we need to look out for one another: we are a collective group whether we like it or not, and we have to look out for one another.

As well as that tricolon, the syndetic list there—"think and say and do"—creating that mounting sense of responsibility: it's not just what we think, it's also what we say, and it's also what we do. That real mounting responsibility.

He then follows that with three lines that use a technique called anaphora. That is where you repeat the same word at the start of successive sentences:

"We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other."

"We... We... We..." The use of that first-person plural pronoun is really important in, again, conveying that socialist sense of responsibility for one another: it's all about us. And so he is repeating that with the anaphora (spelling's up there).

And within those lines, he's got two explicit declarative sentences: "We don't live alone," "We are responsible for each other." Really explicit declarative statements, like we've already talked about in the past, that convey his authority, his confidence, his assuredness in what he's saying, and how strongly he believes in it.

But also in the middle, you have got a metaphor: "We are members of one body." That metaphor of being one body is really interesting because if you think about the implications of that metaphor: it's like if one part of a body doesn't do its job, the whole body malfunctions. So it's really conveying that sense of—again, like the "intertwined with our lives" metaphor did—that idea of us having direct, not just responsibility for one another, but direct consequences in our actions to one another as well. If you don't do something there, it affects somebody over here: if your heart stops beating, everything else is going to fall apart; if your hand never brings food to your mouth, you're going to starve, etc., etc. So the body is really a metaphor reinforcing that idea of needing to work together, needing to all be tied in with one another.

Another thing I think is interesting about both the "intertwined" and the "body" metaphor is that they're both quite natural imagery: "intertwined" is typically used with plants, maybe, and "body" is obviously the natural human body. So by using that, it really conveys a sense of this being a natural thing: it's really normal and natural for us to work together.

We then get the actual dramatic irony that we're here for on this slide, and he says:

"I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and bloody and anguish."

Now, dramatic irony, in case you're unfamiliar with this term—but let's face it, you probably are, because this is a classic technique for teachers to teach with An Inspector Calls—dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the character doesn't. And because the audience knows it, they are able to pick up additional meanings from a line that a character isn't even aware of.

So in this case, the being taught it in "fire and blood and anguish" because they didn't learn the lesson: if you think about our audience in 1945, they've been through World Wars I and II. Our Birling family in 1912 haven't been through either. And so what you've got here is essentially dramatic irony because he is alluding to the world wars: fire, blood, anguish—the pain and the suffering that people are going to go through as a consequence of the wars, with the fire being like gunfire, explosives, you know, the fire in your lungs created from chemical warfare, all that kind of stuff.

So that tricolon as well is a really powerful not just allusion to the war, but allusion to the suffering created, because, again, whenever you analyze a list, analyze the range:

• "Fire": that sense of things being damaged and the power behind the damage.

• "Blood": the physical pain.

• "Anguish": mental pain.

And again, syndetic list as well: "fire and blood and anguish." There's a mounting pain here, a mounting damage being caused by society that is, of course, making our audience think about real Britain and what really happened in Britain during those world wars.

Now, the reason that all of this is so important to keep in mind is because this is, of course, the last thing—this whole speech is the last thing the Inspector says before he leaves. And so it's also significant from a structural perspective, thinking of, like, privileged positions, as his last, final message. And his final message is basically collectivism and social responsibility: we need it, we have to have it, it's not optional—or if we don't, we are going to suffer as a society.

So loads of stuff I've been talking about in this video is about how the Inspector shifts from being the antagonist, being like the contrast, the pain in Mr. Birling's side, to being the protagonist. And one way that he did that was because of the power that he exerts, the authority that he exerts that made him the main character. The other way is because of how he symbolized socialist values, and essentially Priestley was shifting it to be that socialism was the main character and capitalism was the opposing force, rather than the other way around.

And so the final structural device that I want to talk to you about today is foil. Now, a foil is a character designed to illustrate or reveal information, traits, values, or motivations of one character through the comparison and contrast of another character. In this case, the Inspector and Mr. Birling are two sides of a very different coin; they are opposites. Now, that is, of course, really important when we consider everything that we've said in this video: you can absolutely see how they are foils of one another, and so a key part of analyzing this play is how the Inspector is a foil to Mr. Birling.

So my other big recommendation of what you need to be revising next is Mr. Birling. If you know those two characters inside and out, you're going to be able to smash the majority of An Inspector Calls essays!