The Good Woman of Setzuan

The Good Woman of Setzuan

  • Submitted By: Mini
  • Date Submitted: 08/03/2008 10:24 AM
  • Category: Miscellaneous
  • Words: 1379
  • Page: 6
  • Views: 1920

The Good Woman of Setzuan, by Bertolt Brecht, was an amazing play that showed the difficult encounters a person has to face while struggling to be good in a corrupted society. It portrays the desire to be kind and pure, yet the need to be evil to get ahead in life. With a great lesson embedded in the story line, and the actors, costumes, lighting and sound helping the audience to understand the play, the play turned out to be even more incredible.
The theme of the play was good and evil. While Shen Te wanted to be good, she found it very difficult to be good to others and herself at the same time. When the gods gave her 1000 silver dollars as a reward for being kind, she bought a small tobacco shop with it. Through this shop, she wished to help others by spending the profits she made on the hungry and needy people. This however, didn’t turn out so well, because the people that she helped took advantage of her openhandedness. They constantly wanted more, and didn’t care if it caused her business to fail. Under these conditions, Shen Te is stuck and finds it hard to be a good person. In my opinion, the message of the play is that one has to be a little evil to live a good life. It is nearly impossible to be so good to and help others while also trying to keep oneself happy. I do agree with the message of the play because even though a person would love to help those in need, there is only so much that he can do before those being helped threaten to destroy his own survival.
Shen Te, the protagonist, was the prostitute, who wanted to live a good life. She was the only one in the play with pure motivations of helping others. I think the antagonist would be everyone who took advantage of Shen Te’s goodness and purity. The elderly couple who were Shen Te’s landlords used her when she got her tobacco shop. They showed up with many other relatives demanding for a place live. Yang Sun, the man that Shen Te falls in love with, also takes advantage of her. He pretends...

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