Modern texts, Year 11: the story and how the play is built (An Inspector Calls option)

1912

HintThe year a famous liner sank on its first voyage.

The whyThe whole play takes place in a single evening that year, in the Birlings' house in the invented industrial city of Brumley.

Sheila's engagement to Gerald Croft

HintA match that pleases her father for business reasons as well.

The whyThe play opens at the end of a celebration dinner. Gerald is the son of a rival manufacturer, so Mr Birling sees the marriage as good for trade as well as for his daughter.

She has swallowed disinfectant

HintIt was suicide, and a slow and painful one.

The whyThe Inspector says he has just seen her body. The harshness of the death is kept in front of the family all evening, so they cannot think of her as a name only.

Sheila; Gerald; Eric

HintThe daughter, her fiance, and finally the son, who has been out of the room.

The whyEach of them turns out to have met the girl and done her harm: a sacking, a second sacking, an affair, a refusal of charity, and a pregnancy.

That nobody called Goole serves in the local police, and that the infirmary has had no suicide brought in

HintOne call is to the chief constable, the other to the hospital.

The whyThe older characters decide the whole evening was a hoax and start to relax. The younger two say it makes no difference to what each of them did.

A telephone call brings news that a young woman really has died, and that the police are coming to ask questions

HintIt comes as the parents and Gerald are laughing with relief.

The whyThe curtain falls on that news. The evening is about to start again, this time for real, and the audience is left to work out who or what the first Inspector was.

3

HintFewer than a Shakespeare play.

The whyAll three are set in the same room on the same evening.

None: each act carries on from the moment the last one stopped

HintThe curtain falls and rises on the same scene.

The whyThe action runs in real time in one place, with one story. The family, and the audience, get no break from the questioning.

Eric

HintHe has been out of the house during his mother's questioning.

The whyEach act ends on a moment of suspense and the next begins from it. Here the audience has understood the truth before his mother has.

She condemns the unknown father of the child before she finds out that he is her own son

HintShe says exactly what ought to be done to the man responsible.

The whyThe audience sees the trap closing before she does. If Eric had confessed first, she would never have spoken so freely.

Everyone questioned turns out to share the guilt

HintCount the suspects, then count the culprits.

The whyThe play borrows the shape of a detective story and changes its point: the question is not who did it but whether they will admit their part.