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Epilogue
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Good Woman of Setzuan, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Pursuit of Goodness
In The Good Woman of Setzuan, Bertolt Brecht uses the parable of Shen Te, a put-upon woman singled out by the gods as the only good person on Earth, to contemplate whether one can ever truly be plainly, wholly “good.” Throughout the play, as Shen Te struggles to be good to others and to herself—and she fails repeatedly—Brecht ultimately shows how the constraints of contemporary society make it impossible for a person to…
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Greed, Capitalism, and Corruption
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…
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Women and Dual Identities
In The Good Woman of Setzuan, Shen Te—the titular “good woman”—is dismayed to find that her neighbors, her friends, and even her lover refuse to listen to her, heed her wishes, or repay the many kindnesses she does for each of them. In order to preserve her “goodness” while accomplishing the difficult things she needs to do to survive in a capitalistic society, Shen Te creates an alter ego: her “cousin,” Shui Ta…
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Humanity vs. The Divine
In The Good Woman of Setzuan, a trio of unnamed gods comes down to Earth in search of one good person. When they arrive in Setzuan, they have already scavenged the world for one person living a life “worthy of human beings.” The kind, accommodating Shen Te lets the gods in—and, having encountered goodness, they feel their mission is worth continuing. As the play unfolds, the gods continue their travels in search of more…
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