Language, Structure and Dramatic Devices
Language: How Characters Speak
Priestley uses language to reveal character and reinforce themes. Each character’s register tells us about their values.
Birling speaks in long, pompous speeches. He uses business language (“lower costs,” “higher prices”) even when discussing human lives. His monologues reveal a man who talks at people, not with them.
Mrs Birling speaks in clipped, dismissive phrases: “a girl of that sort,” “ridiculous airs.” Her language categorises people by class, reducing individuals to types.
The Inspector speaks plainly and directly. He uses short, simple sentences that cut through the Birlings’ evasions. When Birling name-drops his golfing friend the Chief Constable, the Inspector replies: “I don’t play golf.” His language has moral authority that the Birlings’ more elaborate speech lacks.
Sheila’s language changes across the play. Early on, she uses exclamations (“Oh — how horrible!”) that suggest emotional but shallow reactions. By the end, she speaks in measured, thoughtful sentences: “You began to learn something. And now you’ve stopped.” Her language tracks her moral growth.
Stage Directions
Priestley’s stage directions are as important as the dialogue. The most significant include:
Lighting: “Pink and intimate” before the Inspector; “brighter and harder” after. Symbolises the shift from comfortable illusion to harsh truth.
Setting: “Not cosy and homelike” — the Birlings have wealth but not warmth. The single room creates a sense of claustrophobia; the characters cannot escape the Inspector’s questioning.
The Inspector’s entrance: He arrives just as Birling is lecturing about self-reliance, literally interrupting the capitalist philosophy. His physical presence is described as creating “an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness” — he is an immovable moral force.
Structure: The Three Unities
The play observes the classical three unities of drama:
Unity of time: The entire play takes place in a single evening.
Unity of place: Everything happens in the Birlings’ dining room.
Unity of action: There is one continuous investigation with no subplots.
The unities create relentless tension. There are no scene changes, no time jumps, no escape. The characters are trapped in the room with the Inspector, just as they are trapped by their own guilt. The audience experiences the investigation in real time, sharing the characters’ growing discomfort.
Dramatic Devices
Dramatic irony operates throughout the play. Birling’s predictions (Titanic, war) are wrong. Mrs Birling condemns her own son. The 1945 audience knows that the Edwardian confidence the Birlings display will be shattered by two world wars. Priestley uses dramatic irony to give the audience moral superiority over the characters, ensuring they reject Birling’s worldview.
The cyclical structure — the phone call at the end repeating the Inspector’s arrival — is Priestley’s most powerful structural device. It transforms the play from a detective story into a moral lesson: those who refuse to learn are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
A well-made play follows a predictable structure: a secret is revealed, complications arise, and a neat resolution follows. Priestley uses this form but subverts it. The “resolution” (the Inspector is fake, no girl has died) is immediately undermined by the phone call. There is no neat ending — only an unsettling cycle.
This subversion serves Priestley’s purpose perfectly. A neat resolution would let the audience feel comfortable. The ambiguous, cyclical ending forces them to keep thinking about the play’s questions long after the curtain falls.