How is Eric presented in An Inspector Calls?

How does Eric change across the play?

The stage directions introduce him as "not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive". He laughs at the wrong moment and Sheila calls him "squiffy", so the audience knows something is wrong before anyone on stage admits it.

In Act 1 he is the only man at the table who questions his father. When Birling explains why he sacked the strikers, Eric asks: "Why shouldn't they try for higher wages?" He is on the right side of the argument early, though he does not yet have the courage to hold it.

He is off stage for all of Act 2, while the truth about him comes out. In Act 3 he returns and confesses. He met Eva in the Palace bar, went back to her lodgings when she did not want him to, and saw her again. When she was expecting his child he gave her money he had taken from his father's office, and she refused it once she knew where it came from.

By the end he will not take the way out that Gerald offers. Whether or not the Inspector was real, he says, "the fact remains that I did what I did".

What are the key moments for Eric?

His confession. He tells the Inspector he was "in that state when a chap easily turns nasty". The phrase is an excuse and an admission at once: he blames the drink, but he does not pretend Eva was willing. Priestley shows a young man of his class using a girl because nobody had ever told him he could not.

The stolen money. His father's first reaction is to ask how the theft can be covered up. Eric's is to say why he never asked for help: Birling is "not the kind of father a chap could go to when he's in trouble". The family that looked so close in Act 1 turns out not to talk to each other.

Eva's refusal. She will not take stolen money, and she will not marry him, because she knows he does not love her. The girl his mother calls one of "that class" has firmer principles than anyone in the house.

The ending. When his parents begin to relax, he and Sheila refuse to. His anger is clumsy, but it is aimed at the right thing: that a young woman is dead and they are talking about knighthoods.

What context matters for Eric?

Eric has had the expensive education his father did not, and a job in the family firm waiting for him. He has money and no purpose. Priestley suggests that privilege without responsibility produces exactly this: a man who does harm carelessly.

Men of his class were often excused for how they treated working-class women, and the Palace bar, where he and Gerald both met Eva, is where that double standard lives in the play.

The men of Eric's age in 1912 were the ones who went to war two years later. A 1945 audience knew that, and it sharpens Priestley's point that the younger generation would pay for what their elders refused to learn.

What might an exam question on Eric 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 present Eric as a character who changes?
• How far does Priestley present Eric as responsible for what happens to Eva Smith?

What does a strong paragraph on Eric look like?

Here is an original model paragraph for the first focus.

Priestley presents Eric as weak at first and honest by the end. The stage directions make him "half shy, half assertive", a man unsure of his place in his own family. His question in Act 1, "Why shouldn't they try for higher wages?", shows the right instinct, but he lets his father talk over him. His confession is harder to hear: he was in a state "when a chap easily turns nasty", a phrase that tries to blame the drink. What separates him from his parents is what he does next. When they seize on the idea that the Inspector was a fake, he answers that "the fact remains that I did what I did". Priestley uses him to show that accepting guilt is where change begins.

Key Eric quotations to learn

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

• "not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive" (stage direction, Act 1): unsettled from the start.
• "Why shouldn't they try for higher wages?" (Act 1): he questions his father before he knows his own part.
• "when a chap easily turns nasty" (Act 3): his confession, half excuse and half admission.
• "not the kind of father a chap could go to when he's in trouble" (Act 3): the family is not as close as it looked.
• "the fact remains that I did what I did" (Act 3): he accepts guilt when his parents will not.