Major Barbara Themes

Late in Major Barbara, Andrew Undershaft explains the “Armorer’s Code” to his family. The weapons dealer must sell his wares to whomever can pay for them, leaving judgements about right and wrong to a higher power. His beliefs are essentially anarchist, since he sees power itself as a neutral force and finds evil only in the use of power to control others. He thus confirms Bernard Shaw’s argument in the preface written for…

The earliest and most important lesson Andrew Undershaft learned, as he explains in Major Barbara’s third act, is that the greatest evil and crime in capitalist societies is to be poor. Shaw anticipates that his audience will have difficulty grasping this truth, as he points out in the preface he wrote for the play, since capitalist societies expend massive amounts of energy covering up this truth with platitudes and policies designed to keep the…

Everyone in Major Barbara agrees that good and evil exist in the world and that people should seek good while avoiding evil. Unfortunately, there are almost as many definitions of good and evil as there are characters in the play. For instance, Peter Shirley holds wealth to be a great evil, whereas Andrew Undershaft abhors poverty as the greatest sin. When Adolphus Cusins worries over the morality of manufacturing and selling weaponry, Lady Britomart…

In the preface to Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw offers a bold interpretation of Christianity and what he perceives as the failures of modern society when he declares that the essential core of Christianity is radical forgiveness. He uses the play to present this idea in action and works out its political implications in the preface. Barbara and her fellow Salvationists offer no-strings-attached forgiveness, taking the central idea of Christianity—that Jesus Christ’s death redeemed…