We are not alone, we are members of one body, we are responsible for one another, what was Priestley's main aim in an inspector calls and how successfully does he achieve it.
"An inspector calls" is set in 1912 in an upper-class house hold. Priestley's plot is about a police inspector who interrupts an engagement dinner party to question a family and their guest about a suicide of a young girl called Eva Smith.
The play is a elegant play that attacks the social mores of Priestley's time. The play attracts the attention of the audience; it does this by using climaxes, the slow unravelling of the plot and his use of the detective whodunit style,.
The members of the Berling family are only concerned with individual gain and profit. They are responsible for the young woman death by treating her as property and it is this material wealth that priestly speaks out against.
The whodunit genre keeps the audience guessing all the way trough the play and as clues are solved the culprit becomes clearer, but as soon as you think you know who he or she is, J B Priestley clearly seems to switch the inspecting to another character. Priestley has written this play to give a moral lesson to people, to make them see how they treat people. He does this very well by using an upper-class family and a lower class girl by the name of Eva Smith.
Towards the end of the play Priestley puts the element of doubt in the mind of the audience that there might not even be a girl called Eva Smith or if there is, not all o the Berling family have met her or seen her, for this the family have no photos or pictures of this so-called Eva Smith. The inspector just leaves them to believe that all their bad deeds have lead to a suicide.
Even though "an inspector calls" is a creative written play Priestley really tries to hit home with the importance of care for your neighbour.
Priestley was a socialist in his time, unlike most of the people around that time who were only interested in monopolising and individual gain.