Fragment 1 of 6
The speech opens with the Inspector’s thesis statement, distilled into a single declarative sentence.
"We are members of one body."
Inspector Goole, Act 3 — 6 words (fair dealing)
Notice — what the words do
A short, balanced declarative. No qualifiers, no conditionals - just the simple present tense “are.” The metaphor of the “one body” casts the audience as a single organism rather than a crowd of separate individuals.
Say — your AO2 argument
Priestley borrows the cadence of St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, lending socialist ethics the moral weight of scripture. The collective pronoun "we" silently enrols the 1945 audience in the Inspector’s argument before they have agreed to it.
Zoom out — AO3 context
Compare this to Birling’s Act 1 creed that "a man has to look after himself and his own." Priestley structurally bookends the play with two opposing definitions of selfhood: atomised individual versus connected member.