An Inspector Calls: Social Responsibility and Class

An Inspector Calls is built around one central question: are we responsible only for ourselves, or for one another? Everything in the play, the plot, the characters, the structure, exists to argue for social responsibility, the idea that people have duties towards each other and towards society.

Priestley, a committed socialist, sets up the argument as a clash between two opposed views:

Individual responsibility (Mr Birling)	Collective responsibility (the Inspector)
Look after yourself and your own	We are members of one body
Community is "nonsense"	We are responsible for each other
The poor are not your concern	Ignoring the poor ends in "fire and blood and anguish"

The play does not present these as equal. Priestley loads every technique in favour of the Inspector's view and against Birling's, so that by the end the audience is meant to reject individualism and embrace collective responsibility.

When you write about this theme, frame it as a debate Priestley wants the audience to win in a particular way. Your job is to show how he tips the argument towards collective responsibility.

Priestley gives the case for selfish individualism to Arthur Birling, and then systematically demolishes it.

In his speech just before the Inspector arrives, Birling lectures the young men that "a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own", and dismisses ideas of community as "nonsense". This is the philosophy the play sets out to destroy.

Priestley undermines Birling in two ways at once:

• Through dramatic irony. In the same mood of confidence, Birling calls the Titanic "unsinkable" and rules out war. The 1945 audience knows he is disastrously wrong, so they distrust his politics too.
• Through the plot. Birling's own creed, look after yourself and sack anyone who threatens your profit, is exactly what set Eva Smith on the road to death. His philosophy is shown in action, and the result is a corpse.

The timing is deliberate: the doorbell rings during Birling's speech about minding your own business. The Inspector's arrival is Priestley's reply to Birling's individualism, cutting straight across it.

The theme of responsibility is inseparable from class. Priestley shows that the Birlings' individual acts against Eva were only devastating because of the vast inequality between them.

Each thing the family did to Eva was, on its own, ordinary: a sacking, a complaint to a shop, the end of an affair, a refused charity request. For a wealthy person, any one of these would be a setback. For a working-class woman in 1912 with no welfare state, no savings and no protection, they were catastrophic. Each blow stripped away another means of survival until she had nothing left.

The act	Ordinary for the Birlings	Devastating for Eva
Losing a job	An inconvenience	No income, no safety net
A complaint to an employer	A minor matter	Lost her next job too
The end of an affair	A private sadness	Left alone and vulnerable
A refused charity claim	A committee decision	Her last hope, gone

This is Priestley's point about class: the powerful can afford to be careless, but their carelessness falls hardest on those with the least power. The Inspector forces the family to see that their comfortable lives and Eva's ruined one are connected.

Priestley does not leave the theme to be inferred. Near the end, the Inspector delivers a speech that states the play's argument directly, in language that widens from one dead girl to the whole of society.

He reminds the family that there are "millions and millions" of people like Eva Smith, all with their own lives, hopes and suffering, and all bound up with one another. Then he delivers the play's thesis:

"We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other."

The metaphor of one body is central. It presents society as a single living organism, so that harming any part harms the whole. This is the opposite of Birling's view of society as separate individuals competing for their own gain.

The Inspector then warns what happens if this lesson is refused: people will be taught it "in fire and blood and anguish". The violent tricolon (a group of three) turns his warning into prophecy. For the 1945 audience, who had just lived through two world wars, this named the exact price a selfish, divided world had paid, and made the case for collective responsibility feel urgent and real.

Priestley does not just state the theme; he develops it across the play's shape, so that the argument builds as the evening goes on.

• The chain of confessions shows responsibility spreading. Each character is shown to have touched Eva's life, so no one can claim it was someone else's fault. Guilt is collective, exactly the point the Inspector is making.
• The generation divide dramatises hope. Sheila and Eric accept collective responsibility and are changed by it; their parents and Gerald retreat into individualism. Priestley suggests the young can build the fairer society the older generation refuses.
• The cyclical ending enforces the theme. When the older Birlings decide it was all a hoax and their responsibility disappears, the final phone call announces a real death and a real inspector. Those who reject the lesson are condemned to face it again.

The structure turns an abstract idea into a lived experience for the audience: we watch responsibility spread, we watch some accept it and some refuse it, and we watch the refusers punished. Form and message work together.

A top-band point links structure to theme: the cyclical ending is not just a twist, it is Priestley's warning that a society which refuses collective responsibility will keep repeating its mistakes.

Because responsibility is the play's central theme, it can be brought into almost any modern-text essay, whether the question names it directly or asks about a character, class, or the Inspector.

A strong response does three things:

1. Argues that Priestley takes a side. Do not present individualism and collective responsibility as an even debate. Show that Priestley loads the play against Birling and in favour of the Inspector.
2. Ranges across the whole play. Use the chain of confessions, the generation divide, the Inspector's final speech, and the cyclical ending, not just one moment.
3. Weaves in context (AO3). Connect the theme to Priestley's socialism, the 1912 class system, and the 1945 audience building the welfare state.

A model sentence pulls these together:

Priestley presents social responsibility as a collective duty by making Birling's individualism cause Eva's death, then having the Inspector reframe society as "one body"; for a 1945 audience moving towards the welfare state, this argues that the fair society of the future must reject the selfishness of 1912.

1. Presenting the theme as a balanced debate

Priestley is not neutral. He deliberately discredits Birling's individualism and champions the Inspector's collective view. Show which side the play argues for and how, rather than treating both views as equally valid.

2. Separating responsibility from class

The two themes are inseparable. Eva's death happens because she is powerless and poor while the Birlings are comfortable and secure. Link the failure of responsibility to the inequality of class that makes it deadly.

3. Quoting the final speech without analysing method

"We are members of one body" is a metaphor; "fire and blood and anguish" is a tricolon linked to the world wars. Name these techniques and their effect rather than just quoting the lines as slogans.

4. Ignoring the younger generation's hope

The theme is not only about failure. Sheila and Eric accepting responsibility is Priestley's note of hope. Leaving them out makes the message bleaker than Priestley intended and misses the generation divide.

5. Treating context as a bolt-on

Do not add a paragraph of history at the end. Weave Priestley's socialism, the 1912 setting and the 1945 audience into your analysis of the theme, so context and interpretation reinforce each other.