Inspector Gooles Relationship with Other Characters

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Inspector Goole’s relationship with other characters As in the play, it is the first time Inspector Goole has met the characters and does not really know them so there is no direct relationship between them. However I noticed that Priestley made Inspector Goole and Sheila Birling had a sort of mutual respect for each other. At first Sheila is a bit rude and does not seem to take the inspector seriously, and this in turn makes the audience have a dislike to her like the inspector. On page 18 just after Mr Birling’s questioning Sheila says ‘what do you mean by saying that? You talk as if we were responsible’. From this we can see Sheila didn’t have much time or patience for the inspector. However later on in the play on page 30 Sheila quotes ‘you mustn’t try and build up a wall between us and this girl. If you do, the inspector will just break it down’. You can see from this that Sheila is on the same wavelength as Inspector Goole and due to this understanding the inspector takes her with more seriousness than he did to begin with. The way Priestly made the character of Sheila change her mind, also makes the readers of the play change their earlier views of her. The relationship between Inspector Goole and Arthur Birling is that of very different to the inspectors and Sheila’s. For a start their whole ideology is completely different. We can tell from his speech at the beginning, Mr Birling believes in ‘every man for himself’ whereas the inspector, although most would say Priestly says ‘We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.’ These two ideas are polar opposites, so you can tell from that they will not get on well. He wants to protect himself and his family. He believes that socialist ideas that stress the importance of the community is ‘nonsense’ and that ‘a man has to make his own way.’ I think most of the audience at the time would have
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