The English Club

ESTD:2011 A Love of Learning…

Name of the Candidate: Ph.No:

Character List
Wong
A water seller. He interacts with the gods in dreams. His hand is injured by Mr. Shu Fu, who attacks him with a
curling iron.

First God
The first of three gods who arrive at the city of Setzuan in the Prologue, looking for a good person. Their task is to
find people on the Earth "living lives worthy of human beings."

Second God
The second of three gods who arrive at the city of Setzuan in the Prologue, looking for a good person. Their task is to
find people on the Earth "living lives worthy of human beings."

Third God
The third of three gods who arrive at the city of Setzuan in the Prologue, looking for a good person. Their task is to
find people on the Earth "living lives worthy of human beings."

Shen Te/Shui Ta
Shen Te is a former prostitute who has bought a tobacco shop with the money the gods gave her after she let them
spend the night in her home when no one else would welcome them. After being taken advantage of for being so
"good," Shen Te invents a male alter ego, Shui Ta, her supposed visiting cousin. Shui Ta is economically wise and
does not give handouts the way Shen Te often did.

Mrs. Shin
The former owner of Shen Te's tobacco shop. She demands a free handout of rice and money from Shen Te, since
now she is too poor to feed her children. After witnessing Shu Fu injure Wong's hand with a curling iron, she
convinces Wong to take the case to a judge but then betrays him by "getting on the right side of Mr. Shu Fu."

Unemployed Man
He enters Shen Te's tobacco shop asking for a free cigarette and she gives it to him.

Carpenter
The carpenter has installed shelves in the tobacco shop before Shen Te purchased it, and he demands one hundred
silver dollars for his work. She does not have it, so her "cousin" Shui Ta argues the carpenter down to only twenty
silver dollars.

Mrs. Mi Tzu
Shen Te's landlady. She demands six months' rent in advance, rather unfairly, and Shui Ta tells her that Shen Te does
not have the money.

Yang Sun
An unemployed pilot with whom Shen Te falls in love. When she meets him, he is about to commit suicide because
he cannot work as a pilot anymore.

Old Whore
In Scene 3, she sees Shen Te just before Shen Te meets Yang Sun about to hang himself. She is resentful of Shen Te
for finding success in a profession other than prostitution.

Policeman
He arrests the boy of the mooching family after the boy steals food from the bakery around the corner from the
tobacco shop. He convinces Shui Ta to put out a marriage advertisement for his "cousin," Shen Te.
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Old Man

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He is a carpet seller. After his wife gives Shen Te a loan of two hundred silver dollars, he becomes anxious and wants
it back.

Old Woman
She enters the tobacco shop in Scene 2 to buy a cigar for her husband, the old man, with whom she is celebrating
forty years of marriage.

Mr. Shu Fu
A barber who wants to marry Shen Te. He injures Wong's hand by whacking it with a hot curling iron. He also writes
Shen Te a blank check so she can pay her rent, and offers her the use of his cabins.

Mrs. Yang
The mother of Yang Sun.

Goodness
Love as a Weakness
Patriarchal Capitalism

Greed, Capitalism, and Corruption

Bertolt Brecht, a playwright whose poems, plays, and operas all wrestle with the role of capitalism and greed in
contemporary society, uses The Good Woman of Setzuan to suggest that money, capitalism, and corruption are
significant factors as to why immorality is so pervasive.
The good person of Szechwan” deals with the life of Shen Te as she tries to ascertain goodness in the materialistic
society despite her own poor conditions and later her ultimate decision to mask her identity with that of Shui Ta
after miserably failing to keep up with the goodness.
Bertolt Brecht, a playwright whose poems, plays, and operas all wrestle with the role of capitalism and greed in
contemporary society, uses The Good Woman of Setzuan to suggest that money, capitalism, and corruption are
significant factors as to why immorality is so pervasive.
In The Good Woman of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht, love is portrayed as a commodity and is often seen in conjunction
with some kind of monetary transaction, an issue which is still relevant today as the audience considers the hidden
role of money even in modern relationships
In The Good Woman of Setzuan, love is not equated with goodness. In fact, it is "love," or what is described as such,
that most hinders Shen Te. The theme of love as a weakness is introduced in Scene 2 as the policeman describes the
problem with Shen Te's lifestyle.

How do the gods define "goodness"?

The theme of "goodness," which seems so simple in the title, is revealed as multifaceted right from the beginning of
the play. While Wong runs off to find a house
that will welcome the gods for the night, the gods confer among themselves about
how their mission to find a good person is failing. The second god says, "People just
aren't religious anymore, let's face the fact. Our mission has failed!" The third god,
reading from the resolution they are trying to follow, defines good people as those
"living lives worthy of human beings." This definition is vague, since it is unclear
what exactly a human being is worth.
The gods reveal a bit more about their definition of "goodness" in Scene 1a, during
their interaction with Wong. They ask him to find Shen Te and "show interest in her
goodness - for no one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand." This
reveals that they recognize how difficult it is to be good without support from others.
In Scene 6a, the gods cite goodness as a strength, telling Wong that they cannot
intervene in Shen Te's life because "The good man finds his own way here below!
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The good woman too." However, when the gods appear to Wong in Scene 9a, they
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reveal how little goodness they have found in the world. Shen Te is the only person
who has "stayed good," and Wong draws attention the fact that she hasn't even done
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that. The third god concludes that, "Good intentions bring people to the brink of the
abyss, and good deeds push them over the edge." The gods have discovered that it is
impossible to be "good" in accordance with their rulebook.

How do the characters in the play besides the gods view the idea of "goodness"?
Shen Te provides her own support, in the form of her invented cousin, Shui Ta. When
the carpenter asks him to call Shen Te because "she's good," Shui Ta answers,
"Certainly. She's ruined."
The old woman is a candidate for a "good" person, and Shen Te recognizes that when
she offers to lend her money to pay her rent. Shen Te says, "I wish the gods could
have heard what your wife was just saying, Mr. Ma. They're looking for good people
who're happy - and helping me makes you happy because you know it was love that
got me into difficulties!"
"Goodness" as a theme is addressed in Scenes 6 by Yang Sun. The Song of St.
Nevercome, sung by Yang Sun, reveals that he believes it is futile to try to be "good."
He sings sarcastically, "Oh, hooray, hooray! That day goodness will pay!" and
describes the day that will never come as when "all men will be good without batting
an eye." To him, this day is unachievable.
When Shen Te realizes she is pregnant, her perception of goodness changes as well.
She sees the carpenter's child digging in the trash and realizes that her son will be
born into this world. She sings and it is unclear whether the song is heard by anyone
else. She sings that, "To be good to you, my son / I shall be a tigress to all others / If I
have to. / And I shall have to." With this resolve, she will stand up for her own
property as Mr. Shui Ta.

How is the theme of patriarchal capitalism addressed in the play?

In order to be a true capitalist capable of getting what she wants, Shen Te must
“become” Shui Ta, a male alter ego. Scene 4a, which consists of "The Song of
Defenselessness," demonstrates the theme of Patriarchal Capitalism. Shen Te sings
first with Shui Ta's mask in her hand, then as Shui Ta, with the mask on. The first
part of the song is an appeal to the gods, pointing out that "even the gods are
defenseless" and asking, "Why don't the gods to the buying and selling"? As Shui Ta,
she is more cynical: "You can only help one of your luckless brothers / by trampling
down a dozen others."
In the impoverished village of Setzuan, thievery and bribery abound. The village is ruled by money, much like the
wider world beyond it. Bertolt Brecht, a playwright whose poems, plays, and operas all wrestle with the role of
capitalism and greed in contemporary society, uses The Good Woman of Setzuan to suggest that money, capitalism,
and corruption are significant factors as to why immorality is so pervasive. Capitalist society, Brecht argues, is an
environment in which one can only advance by taking advantage of others. Bad deeds are rewarded and good ones
are punished—and money and capital, Brecht suggests, is at the root of humanity’s inability to “refuse to be bad.”
Many of Brecht’s other plays examine the role of greed, capitalism, and corruption—but in The Good Woman of
Setzuan, Brecht makes one of his plainest and yet most profoundly frustrated statements about the fundamental
impossibility of reconciling humanity’s desire to act morally with the impossibility of being a truly good friend,
neighbor, lover, or employer under the burdensome weight of capitalism. At the start of the play, Shen Te is working
as a prostitute in order to survive. She knows that selling her body is immoral—but she is also aware that there is no
other way for her to make ends meet. Still, the gods overlook Shen Te’s profession and they declare her an
“unusually good woman.” They reward her for her decision to take them in when no one else in town would by
paying her a large sum of money—a sum that will allow her to stop working as a prostitute and open up a shop of
her own. Shen Te believes that if she becomes a business owner, she will be earning money in a more respectable
way—but she quickly discovers that there is no ethical way of making money under capitalism, a system which
requires the exploitation of the poor in order to feed the greed of the rich. As Shen Te opens up her tobacco shop,
she soon finds that her relative financial privilege makes her a beacon for her needy neighbors who seek food,
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shelter, and favors from her. As Shen Te works to keep her neighbors afloat while simultaneously fending off
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financial demands from her landlady Mrs. Mi Tzu, a carpenter, and an unemployed man, Shen Te finds herself
lamenting that when a lifeboat comes for one person, others “greedily / Hold onto it [even] as they drown.” Brecht
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uses Shen Te’s early struggles with money, greed, and corruption to show that in spite of her struggle to be good to
her neighbors, kindness and generosity are always taken advantage of. Everyone around Shen Te is struggling—and
in a world where the wealthy few hoard monetary resources while the working class suffers, Shen Te must choose
whether to protect her own interests and betray her neighbors or be pulled back into poverty and despair.
Brecht deepens Shen Te’s struggle as Shen Te creates an alter ego—Shui Ta, a “cousin” from a faraway province—to
do the ruthless deal-brokering that Shen Te herself feels incapable of doing as a woman who is supposed to be
generous and blandly, blithely “good” above all else. As Shui Ta becomes a necessary presence in Shen Te’s life more
and more often, Brecht charts Shen Te’s descent into greed and the pursuit of capitalistic, patriarchal power. Shui Ta
himself admits that “one can only help one of [one’s] luckless brothers / By trampling down a dozen others,” yet he
continues amassing capital in the forms of wealth, property, and social control over his employees and neighbors as
he expands Shen Te’s humble tobacco shop into a large factory conglomerate with dozens of employees. Soon, Shen
Te comes to see that her “bad cousin” represents all the social, economic, and political corruption that makes the
world such a miserable place to live in for people like herself and her neighbors—toward the end of the play, there
are even rumors that Shui Ta has bought a seat as a local Justice of the Peace. Shui Ta is a ruthless boss, a swindler,
and a manipulator: all of the things that Shen Te knows are necessary for those who wish to succeed materially
under capitalism, but all of the things that she as a “good” woman cannot herself embody. Shui Ta, then, becomes a
tool through which Brecht can indict how society materially rewards the deeds of crooked bosses and landlords
while ignoring the individuals who toil under terrible conditions.
In Shen Te’s climactic, soulful lament to the gods, she decries the fact that pity and empathy became a “thorn in
[her] side” when it came time to choose between the good deeds for which she was punished with poverty and the
bad deeds for which she was rewarded with wealth and power. By charting Shen Te’s struggle to be “good”—and
her ultimate failure to do so—Brecht suggests that even those who work hard to rebel against the impulse to be
greedy, materialistic, and self-serving often end up failing to remain moral in the face of capitalism’s intense
pressures. Brecht’s sympathy (and indeed empathy) for Shen Te is undeniable—he, too, seeks answers to how
humanity can possibly “help the lost [without becoming] lost ourselves.” In the end, Brecht characters aren’t given a
suitable answer—yet Brecht does not end the play without reminding his audience that “moral rearmament” in the
face of capitalism, greed, corruption, and materialism is perhaps the only way “to help good men arrive at happy
ends.”

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“The English Club” an Institute for ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE ENGLISH GRAMMAR for COMPETITIVE EXAMS & SPOKEN ENG-
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