Creating Tension in An Inspector Calls Essay -- An Inspector Calls J,B

Creating Tension in An Inspector Calls An inspector calls is a play written by the author J.B. Priestley. The play is set in the industrial city of Brumley in the North Midlands, in the year of 1912. Act one begins in the family home of the Birling's, at the celebration of the engagement of Mr Birling's daughter. The Birling family at first impression are seen to the audience as a wonderful, prosperous family who live in luxury life style in a big lavish home with a high social status. Arthur Birling is the father of the family; he is a heavy looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties, with fairly easy manners. He is shown to be self-centred, arrogant and someone who believes that he is always right, he also has a lot to say - thought by many as too much. He is portrayed to the audience as being a selfish man, this is shown in many ways through out the play, but the main factor shown is that he was Lord Mayor of the town a few years back and takes this as an advantage to gain self respect from others by using his former community stature to increase his present stature of the manufacturer of the Birling family business. His wife Sybil is about fifty, she is a rather cold woman and her husband's social superior. She has been for the past few years and currently still is the chairwoman, for the town's unemployment charity, it is she who decides which women will receive the unemployment benefit and if their reasons are applicable. She takes this job very seriously and believes it gives her a warrant to be a superior of the town, a woman who classes herself as a very high class in the hierarchy above anyone else. The daughter of the family is the very attractive and pretty Sheila, .. ... challenges the characters in the play. The big question from the author is are we morally blind to the suffering of the poor and are we aware that much of the pleasure we get from life comes from the exploitation of the poor. At the end of the play things turn out to become very eerie as of the call to Mr Birling, which confuses absolutely all of the characters. J.B. Priestley uses inspector Goole as a catalyst towards the Birling family, he is meant as a dramatic device deliberately used by the author to explore his ideas. This is meant to make the family come to a realisation of that poorer people than themselves are actually people with true feelings, and the telephone call at the end warning them that a inspector is about to arrive with questions as to a suicide will reveal weather they have learnt anything about the poorer than themselves.