To the casual reader, the play An Inspector Calls may appear to be just like any other typical dramatic mystery, but when examined in the context of the time and the beliefs and motivations of the author, it actually serves as a message for social change.
             Priestley's goal in the play is to ensure that life after the war is better than before and he hoped that through his writing he could influence people's ideas and help to change society for the better. Although he wrote an Inspector Calls in 1945, just a week after the end of the Second World War, he deliberately set the play in 1912, a time which represented the sort of society people thought better left in the past. The message of the play would be particularly effective on the audiences of the mid 1940s. Priestley expresses his message directly to the war-weary audiences of the era without a thought to its staying power. The "fire and blood and anguish" reference to the First and Second World Wars would be very easily related to by his target audience. These were a people that had experienced the horrors of war and were not eager at the prospect of a repeat. Priestley hoped that they would follow his message and he could somehow play a small part in the prevention of any further conflicts in his lifetime.
             Priestley wrote the play and used it and its characters intentionally as a means to convey the urgent need for social change and social equality. The time span between the composition of the play and the play's setting is used as a device to make the audience more aware of what has happened in the recent past and learn from it. He longed for his play to have an impact and give society the chance, in hindsight, to look back on the past and not simply carry on life in the same way as before. He was particularly concerned about the living conditions of the lower classes, represented in the play by Eva Smith, and the way the upper classes behaved, as seen by the persona...