J.B. Priestley's morality drama takes place in the comfortable dining room of the Birling family, whose self-satisfied celebration of their daughter's engagement is interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious Inspector Goole investigating the suicide of a young working-class woman. As the inspector methodically questions each family member in turn, it emerges that every one of them, in some selfish or careless way, played a part in driving the woman to her death, exposing the family's hypocrisy, class prejudice, and moral cowardice one layer at a time. The play builds toward a startling twist about the inspector's true identity that forces both the family and the audience to confront questions of collective social responsibility. Written just after World War II but set before World War I, it remains a pointed critique of class privilege and the refusal to acknowledge how individual choices ripple outward to affect others.

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