The Good Person of Szechwan - Essay Example

The Good Person of Szechwan The motives of social injustice are not new for Brecht’s creative works. In many of his plays the logic of scenic narration leads the audience to a revolutionary conclusion of deep corruption and inhumanity of such a social system, in which only dirty tricks ensure success and prosperity, whilst goodness leads to death. This idea of ??the dialectics of good and evil, organic hostility of the whole society’s lifestyle to kind (“productive” - as them Brecht calls) principles of human nature was expressed with a great poetic force in The Good Person of Szechwan (1938-1940).

Brecht found a wonderful artistic form, conventionally fabulous and, at the same time, sensuous, for implementation of an abstract philosophical idea. Mutually hostile and excluding one another actions of “kind” Shen Teh and “evil” Shui Ta appeared connected and caused each other. Besides, “kind” Shen Teh and “evil” Shui Ta, as it turned out, are not two people but one - kind and evil at the same time. So, through an unusual and original plot, Brecht reveals an unnatural and paradoxical status of society, in which good leads to evil, and only at the cost of evil we can attain good.

This conclusion is a merciless verdict to the cruel world of enrichment and greed. But the play is not limited to a verification and analysis of this ugly social phenomenon. Brecht opposed the philanthropic views of the three Gods, who wanted to see the man only good, and, at the same time, sanctimoniously closed there eyes to the social conditions that prevented man from being such, putting forward the demand for radical changes in the world. No, a man is not good and kind, implies the internal polemic of Brecht; not good, but rather unholy.

And the living conditions make a man good or bad. Human morality is not a perpetual, independent of the specific circumstances of being, mental phenomenon. Evil reality can not produce a perfect man, no matter who wants him to obey high moral standards. A man can not be good in dog-eat-dog society. Brecht’s appeal is simple – do your best to change yourself first and the vicious world around will fall, sooner or later. References Lawall, Sarah. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume F: The Twentieth Century (Second Edition).

New York: W W Norton & Co Inc., 2001.