The Good Woman of Setzuan tackles some real issues throughout this play but I think what's the most interesting topic of satire is whether a person can, in all actuality, be a good person. The only person who's perceived to be a good person is Shen Te, and she can't even be a truly good person without changing into someone who can be mean. In fact, I think this whole book is satirizing that aspect of human nature. I don't know of anyone who is consistently nice all the time and that is their actual true character. For example in the play, Shen Te is constantly being a "nice" person and allowing people to run all over her (56). But she doesn't have the courage enough to stand up for herself without changing into a whole other person. My question is, is Shen Te truly a nice person? She's simply putting on a mask, she's not changing into an entirely different person, so can she really be good if it's still her who has committed the crimes and who has been selfish and mean towards others (103)? I think that this situation shows us that for some people it is hard to be nice yet firm at the same time, just like Shen Te. I don't think she's a bad person just because she made mistakes under the mask of Shui Ta, but can she really be the good woman of Setzuan if she lied, cheated, and schemed? I think the play is trying to say that it's almost impossible for someone to be good all the time, but it's not fair that someone be good all the time. Even the gods didn't expect her to be good all the time, which is why they didn't get mad when they found out she wasn't being good all the time. No one in life is perfect, and putting too much pressure on someone so that they can be a good person can have an adverse effect on someone, like it did with Shen Te. She couldn't handle being nice to everyone and being run over and having the title of being such a good woman, and the pressure pushed her into having to be Shui Ta.
Brecht, Bertolt, and Eric Bentley. The Good Woman of Setzuan. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1999. Print.
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It's funny that you talk about people that lack what it takes to be nice and firm at the same time, because growing up, I was and still am one of those people. A lot of people tend to take my niceness for weakness, and as result, believe that they can run me over. At the beginning of this year I joined The Church of Christ and have found myself even more on the nice side which I thought wasn't possible, but I guess it's fueled by the desire to be more like the one and only truly good person which is Jesus Christ. Because of the fact that we all sin at some point and fall short of God's glory, I realize that it is expected of me as a human being to at some point by default get angry and lose my temper. But, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that it is inevitable to get angry and doing "bad" things, but as people who srtive to be better, it is our job to try to be understanding and live admirably, because if God were to come to earth today, I'd want to be able to say that I've have been a good person.
ReplyDeleteLauren, I agree with you when you say, “I think the play is trying to say that it's almost impossible for someone to be good all the time.” I believe that this play is showing you how hard it is to be a good person and how troublesome it is to be pushed around by the people around you. Shan Te starts of with being a nice person and ends up suffering because all of her friends are taking advantage of her. When Shan Te creates Shui Ta, Shan Te isn’t being a bad woman she is just using her disguise to be able to stop others from abusing her. So being a good woman means letting others push you around? No. I think Shan Te had her right to create Shui Ta as a defense mechanism to stop the abuse she was getting from her friends. I do believe that Shan Te was a good person but she was just a bit smarter than everybody else.
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