An Inspector Calls
J.B. Priestley (1945)
“A mysterious inspector dismantles a wealthy family's respectability in a single evening — and Priestley dismantles an entire class system in three acts.”
Character Analysis
Not a character in the conventional sense but a dramatic device — Priestley's socialist conscience given a body and a warrant card. He controls information, stages revelations, and delivers moral judgments that no police inspector would make. His identity is deliberately ambiguous: ghost, angel, time-traveller, conscience, or fraud. The ambiguity is the point — his reality matters less than his function, which is to force the Birlings to see themselves clearly.
Controlled, precise, authoritative without class markers. Does not defer to wealth or status. His sentences are designed to extract confession, not to impress.