An Inspector Calls: Planning an Argument about Responsibility
Build a focused argument about changing responsibility. Select moments from across the play and connect accurate evidence to the dramatic choices that give it meaning.
Read the planning question
How does J B Priestley use dramatic methods to present changes in the Birling family’s understanding of responsibility across An Inspector Calls?
This practice question gives a clear focus for the plan. “Changes” includes development, exposure, retreat and resistance: it does not promise that everyone improves. “The Birling family” keeps Arthur, Sybil, Sheila and Eric central; Gerald can act as a foil but is not a Birling. “Dramatic methods” asks how dialogue, staging, timing and structure make understanding visible to an audience.
For a whole-play response, choose connected moments from different stages. Range should develop the argument; it does not require a catalogue of every scene. The full Assignment A response receives one holistic mark out of 30, with AO1 and AO2 equally weighted. Knowledge and interpretation should therefore work together with analysis of language, form and structure. Context can clarify a dramatic choice but has no separate AO4 allocation.
Build the argument before choosing episodes
A plan should begin with a provisional answer, not a pile of scenes. The weakest starting
claim would be that the Birlings all learn to be responsible: it ignores the family's late
division and treats shock as proof of reform. An equally weak opposite would be that nobody
changes, because Sheila and Eric do alter the way they judge their conduct.
A more defensible working thesis is:
Priestley presents the Birlings' understanding of responsibility as an uneven dramatic movement. The Inspector's controlled inquiry leads Sheila and Eric to recognise that conduct matters even without punishment, while Arthur and Sybil retreat towards proof, reputation and escape; the action after Goole leaves turns this divided understanding into the final test.
This thesis is provisional rather than compulsory. It works because it makes four decisions:
- It answers changes with a movement, not a static character label.
- It distinguishes recognition from innocence: Sheila and Eric remain responsible for harm.
- It distinguishes exposure from learning: Arthur and Sybil are shaken without showing
secure moral change. - It leaves room for AO2 by naming the inquiry and post-Goole action as dramatic processes.
The strongest default organisation is by dramatic phase:
| Phase | Main planning question | Useful family contrast |
|---|---|---|
| Opening assumptions | What do the Birlings initially think power and responsibility permit? | Arthur's individualist confidence against Sheila's early correction of his view of workers. |
| Interrogation | How does controlled disclosure expose or alter each response? | Sheila's admission against Sybil's refusal; Eric's later remorse against parental self-protection. |
| After Goole leaves | Which changes survive when public consequences appear to disappear? | Arthur and Sybil's relief against Sheila and Eric's insistence that the conduct remains real. |
A character-by-character plan can be valid, but each character paragraph would need at least
two phases so that development stays visible. Separate paragraphs called “Arthur”, “Sheila”,
“Sybil” and “Eric” can easily become four profiles. A phase-based plan more naturally answers
“across” and allows the family to remain in conflict within every paragraph.
Text
An Inspector Calls: Responses after the inquiry
By J B Priestley
[1] SHEILA [passionately]: You’re pretending everything’s just as it was before.
[2] ERIC: I’m not!
[3] SHEILA: No, but these others are.
[4] BIRLING: Well, isn’t it? We’ve been had, that’s all.
[5] SHEILA: So nothing really happened. So there’s nothing to be sorry for, nothing to learn. We can all go on behaving just as we did.
[6] MRS BIRLING: Well, why shouldn’t we?
[7] SHEILA: I tell you — whoever that Inspector was, it was anything but a joke. You knew it then. You began to learn something. And now you’ve stopped. You’re ready to go on in the same old way.
[8] BIRLING [amused]: And you’re not, eh?
[9] SHEILA: No, because I remember what he said, how he looked, and what he made me feel. Fire and blood and anguish. And it frightens me the way you talk, and I can’t listen to any more of it.
[10] ERIC: And I agree with Sheila. It frightens me too.
[11] BIRLING: Well, go to bed then, and don’t stand there being hysterical.
[12] MRS BIRLING: They’re over-tired. In the morning they’ll be as amused as we are.
Notes
Act 3. Local paragraph labels identify this extract.
Choose evidence that does two jobs
Every selected moment should do an AO1 job and an AO2 job. Its AO1 job is to support a claim
about what a Birling understands, admits, resists or tries to escape. Its AO2 job is to reveal
how Priestley makes that understanding visible in drama.
Check wording and event order in the play when building a whole-text plan. Page numbers vary by edition. Brief quotations and precise Act-and-event references leave room to explain construction:
| Event anchor | AO1 job | AO2 route | Development it can support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Birling's individualist speech is interrupted by the doorbell and Goole's entrance. | Establishes Birling's belief in private interest and his confidence as household authority. | Interruption and entrance timing turn an ideological challenge into action on stage. | Responsibility first arrives as an unwelcome challenge to the family's protected order. |
| Sheila counters the view of workers as “cheap labour” with “people”, then admits her Milwards complaint. | Shows that she can recognise human value and her own misuse of status. | Dialogue contrast and confession before the family shift authority away from Arthur. | Sheila begins to move from unthinking privilege towards self-scrutiny, without becoming innocent. |
| Sybil refuses aid and blames the unborn child's father before Eric is revealed. | Exposes a class-bound view in which responsibility belongs elsewhere. | Delayed disclosure, dramatic irony, the Act boundary and Eric's entrance make her judgement rebound onto her family. | Exposure does not guarantee understanding; Sybil's authority is reversed while her resistance remains. |
| Eric later insists that admitted conduct still matters when the inquiry may be a hoax. | Shows moral recognition after grave wrongdoing, not redemption. | Structural contrast between his confession and the post-Goole debate makes his changed judgement audible beside his parents' relief. | The younger response can develop while guilt and harm remain. |
| Arthur and Sybil pursue the hoax theory while Sheila and Eric resist an easy reset. | Turns responsibility into a conflict over whether conduct matters without detection. | Contrasting dialogue and possible group alignment make divided understanding visible in performance. | The late test reveals which apparent changes endure. |
| The final telephone call follows apparent relief. | Restores the threat of consequence without proving lasting reform. | The double ending, sharp interruption and final shared stage picture reverse the false resolution. | The family is shocked together, but the play leaves its future understanding unresolved. |
The expert choice is not always the most famous quotation. For this prompt, Sybil's judgement
before Eric's return is more useful than a detached slogan because one sequence can show
character understanding, family relationship, dramatic irony, audience knowledge and
whole-play structure.
Here is the reasoning chain in full:
- Claim: Sybil treats responsibility as something that can be assigned downwards to a
less respectable stranger rather than recognised in her own use of power. - Smallest sufficient evidence: she refuses the appeal and condemns the unknown father
before Eric returns and is identified. - Dramatic choice: Priestley delays Eric's disclosure until Sybil's judgement is complete,
using the Act boundary and entrance to turn certainty into self-indictment. - Audience position: spectators can anticipate the family connection while Sybil cannot,
so her authority may appear to collapse before she accepts any moral lesson. - Whole-play development: her later relief at the possible hoax suggests that exposure
has not become secure understanding. - Return to the prompt: dramatic sequence presents resistance to change, not just one
harmful decision.
An alternative reading may place more emphasis on suspense: the delayed revelation keeps the
audience waiting across the Act break. That effect can coexist with self-indictment. The method
is especially valuable because it advances the plot while changing how the audience judges
Sybil's understanding.
Text
An Inspector Calls: Assigning responsibility
By J B Priestley
[1] INSPECTOR Because she’d been turned out and turned down too many times. This was the end.
[2] SHEILA Mother, you must have known.
[3] INSPECTOR It was because she was going to have a child that she went for assistance to your mother’s committee.
[4] BIRLING Look here, this wasn’t Gerald Croft—
[5] INSPECTOR (cutting in, sharply) No, no. Nothing to do with him.
[6] SHEILA Thank goodness for that! Though I don’t know why I should care now.
[7] INSPECTOR (to MRS BIRLING) And you’ve nothing further to tell me, eh?
[8] MRS B. I’ll tell you what I told her. Go and look for the father of the child. It’s his responsibility.
Notes
Act 2. Local paragraph labels identify this extract.
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