The final moments of An Inspector Calls are among the most heavily discussed and analysed in modern drama, making them a goldmine for top-tier essay arguments. Whether you are studying for AQA, Edexcel, OCR, or any other exam board, mastering the ending is essential for demonstrating the high-level critical understanding examiners look for in Grade 9 responses.

In this video, we go beyond a simple plot summary to break down the ending using advanced literary frameworks. I’ll introduce you to two key diagnostic questions you should ask of any dramatic conclusion, before exploring how Priestley uses the final twist to interrogate moral versus criminal responsibility. We’ll also examine how the ending intersects with dramatic genres (specifically Realism and the traditional "Well-Made Play") and unpack the fascinating influence of Dunne's and Ouspensky's time theories on the play's cyclical structure.

Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
1:20 Two key questions to ask about the ending
2:03 what happens in the ending of An Inspector Calls?
3:54 how the ending links to the themes of moral responsibility and criminal responsibility
11:31 how the ending of the play links to the genre of realism
13:52 how the ending of the play links to time theorists
16:12 how the ending of the play links to the genre of the well-made 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:

Hello everybody, it's Mrs. Wear of Stream English here, and today I'm going to be talking to you about the ending to An Inspector Calls.

Now, some people read An Inspector Calls and by the end they think: "What the...?" And sometimes you might have understood the ending, but you might be thinking: "What can I possibly say about that? Why does it end that way?" And you might also be one of those crazy conspiracy theorists out there who has made your own mind up about why it ends that way and what it all means. You can tell us all in the comments about how the Inspector is the dead baby of Eva and Eric, and how he's come back as a ghost and yet somehow is also a middle-aged man, and he's seeking vengeance for his mother's death. Whatever conspiracy theories you've got, you can let us know in the comments.

What I'm going to be doing today is telling you about how you can analyze the kind of key ideas of the ending of the play and why it might have been written the way that it was. So, let's do this!

There's two really interesting questions we have to ask ourselves about the ending to An Inspector Calls:

The first question is: Why would Priestley call into question the identities of the Inspector and Eva? Why would he make us wonder if they were real, or if they were a ghost, or if they were a trickster?
Second of all, we have to ask ourselves: Why end on a cliffhanger? Why not give the audience the satisfaction of seeing what happens to the Birlings? Why end right as they find out that a police inspector is on his way?

There are a few different reasons for both of these, and that's what we're going to start going through now.

We'll start off by recapping just actually what happens in the ending. This video is going to assume that you've already been studying the play, so you already know the plot, you already know the context, you already know the themes. If you don't know any of that stuff, then some of the content of this video might not make a lot of sense to you, and also it will be a ginormous spoiler. So consider this your warning: do not keep watching now if you haven't yet actually properly studied the play.

But if you have, you will remember that in the end of An Inspector Calls, after the Inspector has left, the Birlings and Gerald start to do some kind of detective work of their own, and they realize that the Inspector is not a real detective. They find out that no girl had died by suicide that night, and they decide that there is no evidence that they were all talking about the same girl.

Now, this leads them to start feeling pretty happy with themselves, because they feel like it was all just a joke and it was no big deal and it wasn't serious. That is: Mr. Birling, Mrs. Birling, and Gerald do. Sheila and Eric are still kind of like, "Well, this was still a really messed-up situation. We still did what we did. We shouldn't be patting ourselves on the back right now." And Mr. Birling is making fun of like, "Oh, this younger generation, they can't take a joke, haha."

And then the phone rings, and the play ends with this line said by Mr. Birling:

"That was the police. A girl has just died—on her way to the Infirmary—after swallowing some disinfectant. And a police inspector is on his way here—to ask some questions—"

One of the big themes of An Inspector Calls is responsibility. You've probably been taught a lot about social responsibility and how it is a core theme going throughout the play, and that is absolutely true. But there's two other kinds of responsibility that the play explores: moral responsibility and criminal responsibility.

Moral responsibility is about our responsibility to do what is right and not to do what is wrong. Criminal responsibility is about the need for us to do what is legal and not what is illegal. Now, of course, what is legal is not always what is moral, as I'm sure you can think of many real-world examples yourself.

Now, if we think about the ending to An Inspector Calls and why Priestley would bring into question the Inspector's identity, we have to think about what the Inspector represents as a police inspector. The whole reason he's been able to have power from the start of the play is because of his position as a police inspector: he represents the law, the legal system, the criminal system, and therefore that gives him sufficient power to be able to at least get through the door and begin challenging the Birling family.

In other words, what concerns the Birling family is that criminal responsibility—the idea that the Inspector might have the power to accuse them of a crime and they would have to then face the punishment for that crime.

Now, when it turns out that there is no Inspector Goole and there wasn't an inspector at all—whoever spoke to them was just, you know, maybe some random bloke off the street who thought he'd have a punt with messing with some middle-class lives for a night—well, when that happens, the criminal responsibility disappears. They have no longer done anything illegal; there is no risk of them being accused of a crime and having to face the punishment, and therefore they're happy. It doesn't matter that what they did was still immoral, because the criminal responsibility wasn't there.

Now, of course, I keep saying "they" as if all of the Birlings responded the same way, but that isn't the case. Sheila and Eric do care about the moral responsibility, and they have lines in that ending that show that they care. We're going to start by looking at this quote said by Sheila:

"Sheila: But don't you see, if all that's come out to-night is true, then it doesn't much matter who it was made us confess. And it was true, wasn't it? You turned the girl out of one job, and I had her turned out of another. Gerald kept her—at a time when he was supposed to be too busy to see me. Eric—well, we know what Eric did. And mother hardened her heart and gave her the final push that finished her. That's what's important—and not whether a man is a police inspector or not.

Eric: He was our police inspector all right."

So this quote here clearly shows that both Sheila and Eric are taking that moral responsibility, because Sheila is essentially listing all of the immoral behaviors that the family engaged in. Similarly, when Eric says "He was our police inspector all right," he's not referring to the legal role of the inspector, but more in a sense of: he was the one who made them all really kind of investigate and think about and reflect on what they've done. Again, that kind of moral responsibility: he had made them all take that moral responsibility and recognize what they had done.

Here's a second quote which looks at things from Mr. and Mrs. Birling's perspective:

"Sheila: But it doesn't make any real difference, y'know.

Mrs. Birling: Of course it does.

Eric: No, Sheila's right. It doesn't.

Birling: That's comic, that is, coming from you. You're the one it makes the most difference to. You've confessed to theft, and now he knows all about it, and he can bring it out at the inquest, and then if necessary carry it to court. He can't do anything to your mother and Sheila and me—except perhaps make us look a bit ashamed of ourselves in public—but as for you, he could ruin you."

So there's a few interesting things here. First of all, clearly the Birlings are prioritizing the criminal over the moral. Mrs. Birling and Mr. Birling definitely think that if the Inspector isn't a real police inspector, none of this matters. And that is clearly because of the crime. Because as Mr. Birling points out with that superlative of "most," Eric is the one who's going to face the criminal responsibility there; he is the one with the most serious consequences to face.

He also, of course, uses that metaphor at the very end of "ruin you." Now, what's interesting there is that "ruin you" is a reference more almost to like his social status. That's how that metaphor is commonly used, and certainly was back then: like ruin all of your social standing, ruin your reputation. So even there, what Mr. Birling is caring about is that kind of wider social standing that he has cared about so much since the beginning of the play.

What's interesting as well in this quote is how he says that he, Mrs. Birling, and Sheila won't face any criminal charges: "just look a bit ashamed of ourselves in public." He really downplays it and makes it seem like it's not a very big deal.

On the other hand, literally like a page earlier, this is what he was saying:

"Birling: There'll be a public scandal.

Eric: Well, I don't care now.

Birling: You—you don't seem to care about anything. But I care. I was almost certain for a knighthood in the next Honours List—"

And so we see again that, in terms of what Mr. Birling cares about—even though he tried to downplay it earlier—it is all about his reputation. And that is what is going to be destroyed by having to take the criminal responsibility. That's why he cares about the criminal responsibility: not because he committed a crime, but because he will ruin his reputation and he will ruin all of the power and status that he has gained.

On the other hand, Eric and Sheila have clearly expressed that they do not care about that status; what they care about is learning from their mistakes and learning from what has happened.

Overall, then, we can see that by having the ending call into question the Inspector's and Eva's identities, it's actually a really clever way for us to be able to see the Birlings for who they really are, even more than we already have:

We really have it reinforced how much Mr. and Mrs. Birling and Gerald haven't learned from their mistakes.
And we have it reinforced to us how much Sheila and Eric have learned from their mistakes.
We see how much Eric and Sheila have developed and grown as people, and how stagnant Mr. and Mrs. Birling and Gerald are.

This, of course, serves Priestley's wider message that we as a British society need to progress and move forward, and to do that, we have to learn from our old capitalist, selfish ways and look to a brighter, more socially responsible, more morally responsible way of being.

Time to look at another reason why J.B. Priestley calls into question the identities of the Inspector and Eva, and that is that he's disrupting the realism of the play.

So, what is realism? Well, the clue is kind of in the name. Realism is a type of theater which basically tries to illustrate real life. It's always in its plot about emphasizing the reality of society, and so it tries to make things feel as much as possible like you're watching real life rather than like you're watching a play. And for 99% of An Inspector Calls, that's what J.B. Priestley does: he really tries to create the realism of everyday conversation and a real middle-class British family.

However, as soon as he calls into question the identity of the Inspector, and we start to really question like, you know, is he a ghost? Is he from the future? Is there something supernatural about him? He disrupts that realism massively. And we have to ask ourselves: why?

Okay, yes, I can hear someone piping up in the back and saying it's because he's a bad writer and he didn't spot this flaw in his writing or whatever, but I'm not even going to pay attention to that person. I'm going to say that he did it completely on purpose, and I'm going to say it's a kind of beautifully cynical and disillusioned take on reality. Because ultimately, the reality of the play so far has been the police challenging the immoral behaviors of the middle class against the working class, and J.B. Priestley is basically being like: come on, that ain't real, that's fantasy. That is not what really happens in British society; that is not really how we actually behave. In reality, they get away with it, just as they thought they had done.

So, in a way, we can ask ourselves: is that what he's doing? Is he trying to make the audience realize almost the fantasy nature of the plot just in its very nature of showing a working-class person finally getting justice? Maybe.

There's just one more idea I want to look at now for why J.B. Priestley might have created that question around the Inspector and Eva's identities, and that is related to something that really was influential on him at the time: he was really influenced by time theorists, one of which was called Ouspensky.

Now, Ouspensky's time theory was basically that the universe was like a cycle, and it would just keep going on and on and on, and we keep repeating our lives exactly the same. And if we changed our behaviors, if we learned from our mistakes, we might be able to just change the cycle slightly and improve things in our lives, in the universe, in society.

And so what we can see in An Inspector Calls is almost like an Ouspensky time theory play, right? Because in that sense, you might be able to argue that the Inspector is from the future, and he is here to give the Birlings a chance to learn from their mistakes. And then when they don't, things repeat themselves.

Ouspensky's time theory can also help us with looking at the other question on the ending: Why does it end with a cliffhanger?

Now, if we think of Ouspensky's time theory of the cycle and we think about that phone call telling us that there's another police inspector coming, we can almost view that cliffhanger as a symbol of the restarting of the cycle.

Now, we have to ask ourselves: how can we talk about this in an essay? Well, this Ouspensky's time theory really helps to support Priestley's argument about what he wants to happen in Britain—basically, that we become more socialist. He's saying that if we keep repeating the mistakes of the past, the capitalist mistakes of our past, and we don't learn and progress as a society, we're just going to keep repeating the same mistakes. And we've seen that before as well in the Inspector's final speech, when he has that line about being taught that message in "fire and blood and anguish," and how that is an allusion to World War I and II—which, by the way, is another quote that could support the idea that the Inspector is a symbol of Ouspensky's time theory and has come from the future, because he seems to know about the wars.

Another reason why An Inspector Calls ends on a cliffhanger, and the last reason we're going to look at today, is that Priestley is disrupting the well-made play.

A well-made play was a popular dramatic genre back in the 19th century and also into the 20th century as well. And as you can see from the structure here, it really fits with that kind of roller-coaster ride of emotions that An Inspector Calls goes through, with that kind of constant different conflicts and mini-climaxes as it builds to the biggest climax towards the end.

However, one of the key features of the well-made play is that after that final climax, everything's supposed to kind of resolve, and they call it a return to order—basically like your happy ending. The thing is, An Inspector Calls does not remotely do that. There is no return to order.

Why? Well, first of all, why the well-made play is the question we have to ask ourselves. We're dealing with the 1940s, so the well-made play's popularity would mean that it's a familiar genre to many people in the audience, many frequent theatergoers. And so in that sense, they'd almost be expecting the happy ending. It's kind of like with Pixar films: no matter how tough things seem in a Pixar film, you know it's going to have a happy ending. And so by disrupting that, by removing that happy ending, Priestley has really disrupted the genre of the well-made play.

And there's kind of a couple of reasons for this:

First of all, it's again almost fitting with that realism, that cynical realism of his: in reality, we don't have a happy ending yet. British society does not have a happy ending for the working class and their struggles, and so An Inspector Calls does not end on a happy ending either.
Secondly, it's part of getting his audience to reflect on that reality of the play in terms of their part in it. If we think back to Ouspensky's time theory and that suggestion of the cycle going over again, the play has ended on the cycle restarting. So we can almost think of our audience as now going out into the real world in that continuing cycle, and they are now the ones who are going to need to go and break it in the actual real world. And again, I think that's part of why Priestley uses that realism, right? So that we as an audience really don't see that difference between what we're seeing on the stage and the real Britain outside.

So it's kind of almost a clever call to arms to his audience of like: "Come on guys, the cycle's restarted. What are you going to do now when you leave this theater to disrupt the status quo that we've got in Britain at the moment?"

Understanding & Analysis of the Ending to An Inspector Calls

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