J.B.Priestley’s play, An Inspector Calls Essay -- English Literature

By what means, and how successfully is suspense created and sustained in An tester Calls?An examiner Calls EssayBy what means, and how successfully is suspense created and sustainedin An inspector Calls? Show analytical and interpretative skills The effects of dramatic devices and social organisation Layers of meaning in language, ideas and themes The social and historical setting/contextJB Priestley wrote An Inspector Calls towards the end of World War2. The play however, is set in 1912 at a wealthy, middle- rank familyhome. The play is ab come out a family celebrating an engagement, when anInspector calls, and tells them of a young girls suicide. The playis continuously set in the familys dining room, but it has precise stagedirections, so separately character must be sitting in a original place.Suspense is used right through the play, usually at its boot at theend of an act.I think JB Priestley was trying to get a message across to us that weneed to abolish the social class differences, and all be equal.The play is very good because you are ever trying to find out whowas responsible for the suicide, and you know that everybody fits in,but you mountt know when or how.As you find, or think youve open something out, the play takes a newdramatic turn, which definitely makes suspense the pigment factor. Whatmakes the play even better is that the audience always knows a visual sensemore than the characters do, and you are always question whyhavent they worked that out?Suspense is very successfully created and sustained in An InspectorCalls.When Act one begins, the mood is merry, and civilised in the diningroom, at The Birlings house. The family are happy, excited and ... ...er this phone call meansthat yes everything was true, or no, it was a tosh. Then, it is usedas a dramatic device again when it rings, and the local anaesthetic Inspector sayshe is coming round to question the Birlings about a young girlsdeath. The play ends here.Now, we have fou nd out the suspense is created and sustained verysuccessfully in An Inspector Calls. With you always wonderingwhether the Inspector is real, and all the cliffhangers that are used,you are constantly left(a) in suspense, even after the very unusualending. You are wondering at the end whether this time it really isreal, or is it another hoax? We will never know. Dramatic devices area key gene in this play, for example in Act 3 a telephone set is thefocal point. It can be little things like that. I take to this brings agood conclusion to a very good, interesting, even if weird play.