Essay --

The play The Good Woman of Setzuan was written by Bertolt Brecht. He started writing it in 1938 but it wasn’t completed until 1943. The play begins with a water seller named Wong who is out trying to sell his product. While working, he meets three gods. The gods have been searching the earth for a good person who lives by their guidelines. However, they find only vagrants and sinners. Wong tells them about a prostitute who â€Å"can’t† say no, and is likely to do any good deed asked. Wong introduces the gods to the prositut, Shen Te, and find that she is good. By the fact that Shen Te gave them a play to stay for the night even though it lost her some money. Given that they find Shen Te to be good the gods reward her with money that she uses to buy a tobacco shop.She also allows homeless families to live in the shop. Her kindness is impressive to the gods and others, but her shop quickly becomes overcrowded, messy, and low on money. Then one day Shen Te’s mysterious cousin, Shui Ta shows up. Shui Ta kicks out the people living in the shop and returns it back into a profit-earning business. However, the audience is aware that Shui Ta is really Shen Te in a mask. Eventually Shen Te returns and continues her her good deeds. As time progresses, word of the â€Å"good woman of setzuan† spreads and more people come to the tobacco shop looking for help. As more people demand Shen Te’s charity, Shui Ta shows up more and more often. Shui Ta starts coming around so frequently that he is able to grow the business into a large tobacco shop with many employees. Shui Ta is not the only man trying to help Shen Te. Shen Te meets a pilot named Yang Sun. Shen Te like him but her friends do not. They would rather she date the local baker who... ...nkrupt and Shen Te would be unable to help anyone. At the same time, if Shui Ta grows the business larger, Shen Te would be able to help even more people. This is evident as the story progresses. As more people come to Shen Te for help, Shui Ta appears more often to create a larger shop. This is because a larger shop means helping more people. During one of the meetings between Wong and the gods, they discuss the rules put into place. The gods almost admit that they’re system isn’t perfect, but they do admit that it is difficult to manage. At the end of the trial, the gods finally sympathize with the bad moralities needed in this world by allowing Shui Ta to exist part time. This brings out the deeper questions in life like â€Å"why are we here?† and â€Å"who are we?†. At first glance, this story seems a little silly and farfetched, but upon deeper analysis we see the moral