Notes & Quotes — AQA Paper 2: Modern texts
J.B. Priestley
An Inspector Calls is a play by J.B. Priestley, written in 1945 but set in 1912, and the most commonly studied modern text for AQA GCSE English Literature Paper 2 — it is also one of the most popular post-1914 prose/drama choices for Edexcel GCSE English Literature. The wealthy Birling family are celebrating their daughter Sheila's engagement when Inspector Goole arrives, investigating the suicide of a young working-class woman, Eva Smith. Through the evening, each family member is revealed to have played a part in Eva's decline and death. Priestley uses the play, and its dramatic irony from being set two years before the Titanic sank and two years before the First World War, to argue for collective social responsibility against the Birlings' individualism and complacency.
The ideas examiners expect you to track across the whole text.
Social Responsibility
The play's central theme, delivered explicitly through the Inspector's closing speech — Priestley argues that individual actions ripple outward and that a society built on 'each person for themselves' inevitably harms the vulnerable, as it did Eva Smith.
Class and Inequality
Eva Smith has no voice of her own in the play — she never appears on stage and is known only through the family's accounts of her — which Priestley uses to dramatise how the working class is treated as expendable by those with power over their livelihoods.
Generational Divide
Sheila and Eric's capacity for guilt and change is repeatedly contrasted with Mr and Mrs Birling's refusal to accept any responsibility, reflecting Priestley's hope (writing in 1945, after two world wars) that a younger generation could build a more socially responsible post-war Britain.
Appearance vs Reality
The Birlings' respectable, celebratory surface at the start of the play is systematically dismantled by the Inspector's questioning, revealing the exploitation and moral compromise beneath their prosperity.
An essential set — not exhaustive. Know where each sits in the text and which theme or character question it could support, not just the words themselves.
“a man has to make his own way — has to look after himself and his own”
“the Titanic... unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable”
“I'll never, never do it again to anybody”
“she was giving herself ridiculous airs... She had only herself to blame”
“I did nothing I'm ashamed of”
“You're not the kind of father a chap could go to when he's in trouble”
“We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.”
“one Eva Smith has gone — but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us”
“Everything's all right now, Sheila. What about this ring?”
“You're the one I blame for this”
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