Themes
Key
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
Greed, Capitalism, and Corruption
Women and Dual Identities
Humanity vs. The Divine
Summary
Analysis
Shui Ta has established a tobacco factory in Shu Fu’s cabins. Several families, mostly women and children, work together. The sister-in-law, the grandfather, the carpenter, and the carpenter’s three children are among them. Yang Sun and Mrs. Yang enter. Mrs. Yang tells the audience that the Shui Ta, after opening the flourishing tobacco factory three months earlier, has transformed Yang Sun into a “model citizen.” After threatening to bring a claim for “breach of promise of marriage” against Yang Sun on Shen Te’s behalf, Shui Ta agreed to let Yang Sun repay his debt of 200 silver dollars by coming to work in the factory. The hard work, Mrs. Yang says, has made Yang Sun into an honest man—he is now foreman of the factory. As Yang Sun takes his place in front of the workers, he leads them in song.
In just a few months, Shen Te’s enterprise has become unrecognizable. No longer a small neighborhood shop, the tobacco factory is now a veritable sweatshop where the needy of Setzuan must work tirelessly for low wages. There is no charity or goodness in the town anymore—Shui Ta rules all with an iron fist, turning everyone he can into a worker and demanding labor in exchange for the things Shen Te once doled out with no strings attached.
Themes
Yang Sun and the others sing the “Song of the Eighth Elephant.” The song, a parable, tells of a man named Chang who had seven wild elephants and one tame one named Little Brother. Chang put Little Brother in charge of guarding and overseeing the work of the other elephants. Little Brother kept his tusks even as the other elephants wore theirs down through hard work—“seven are no match for one,” the chorus sings, “if the one has a gun.” As the workers sing, Shui Ta smokes a cigar and strolls among them. Mrs. Yang, addressing the audience again, calling Shui Ta a “real superior man.”
Shui Ta has turned Shen Te’s shop into a massive factory—a place that was meant to be a gathering place for the community has turned into a soulless enterprise. The “Song of the Eighth Elephant” is sung by the workers as a kind of anthem yet to Brecht’s audiences is meant to be satirical, indicting the ways in which capitalism turns friends, neighbors, and workers against one another.
Themes
