How is responsibility presented in An Inspector Calls?

How does the play build the idea of shared responsibility?

Through its structure. The Inspector reveals each character's part one at a time: Mr Birling sacked Eva, Sheila had her dismissed from Milwards, Gerald took her up and then ended the affair, Mrs Birling turned her away from a charity, and Eric's actions left her pregnant and without support. Each act adds a link, so by the end no single person can be blamed and everyone is to blame.

No one of these actions would have ruined her alone. It is the chain that does it, and Priestley uses the chain as a picture of society: small, selfish choices by comfortable people add up to disaster for someone with nothing.

Who accepts responsibility, and who refuses?

Mr Birling opens the play with the opposite belief: a man should look out for himself and his family, and ideas of community are "nonsense". He spends the evening protecting his reputation, and at the end he is relieved rather than changed.

Mrs Birling is the most stubborn. She insists she did nothing wrong and says the blame belongs to the father of the child, not realising until too late that she is talking about her own son.

Sheila and Eric accept their guilt. Sheila vows she will never behave that way again, and at the end both refuse to join their parents' relief. Gerald sits between the two groups: he shows real feeling for Eva, but he is the first to argue that the Inspector was not genuine, so that everything can go back to how it was.

What context matters for responsibility?

Priestley was a socialist who wanted a society that took care of its weakest members. In 1912 there was little help for someone like Eva: no unemployment support for most workers and no health service. Charity depended on the judgement of people like Mrs Birling.

By 1945 that was changing. The Labour government elected that year set up the welfare state, including the National Health Service in 1948. Priestley's audience was being asked to vote for, and live by, the belief that "We are members of one body".

The 1912 setting matters too. The Inspector's warning about "fire and blood and anguish" points to the two world wars the audience had lived through, suggesting that selfishness on a national scale leads to catastrophe.

What might an exam question on responsibility ask?

AQA sets An Inspector Calls in Section A of Paper 2. You choose one of two essay questions, and no extract is printed, so every quotation has to come from memory. The question carries 30 marks, with 4 more for spelling, punctuation and grammar (AO4). Other boards also set an essay on the play, so check your own board's past papers for the exact wording.

Two focuses to practise:

• How does Priestley explore ideas about responsibility in An Inspector Calls?
• How does Priestley use the different generations to present ideas about responsibility?

What does a strong paragraph on responsibility look like?

Here is an original model paragraph for the second focus.

Priestley divides the family by age to show that responsibility can be learned. Mr Birling calls the idea of shared duty "community and all that nonsense", and at the end he is still laughing at "the famous younger generation who know it all". Sheila, in contrast, tells her parents they are pretending "everything's just as it was before". The generations hear the same evening and draw opposite lessons. For Priestley, writing in 1945, the young were the hope for a fairer Britain, and the old were the reason it had been needed.

Key responsibility quotations to learn

Short phrases you can quote exactly, each with a use.

• "community and all that nonsense" (Mr Birling, Act 1): the view the play sets out to defeat.
• "We are members of one body" (the Inspector, Act 3): the play's central message.
• "they're people" (Sheila, Act 1): seeing workers as human is the first step to responsibility.
• "the famous younger generation who know it all" (Mr Birling, Act 3): his sneer at the young shows he has learned nothing.
• "fire and blood and anguish" (the Inspector, Act 3): what happens when responsibility is refused.