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 good people—but they also appear continually in the dreams of Wong, the poor water seller, in order to receive reports from the man as to how Shen Te is holding up and whether she has remained good. As the human world and the divine world overlap in this way, Brecht portrays the gods as pessimistic, bumbling figures who are just as lost and as hopeless as humans are. Ultimately, Brecht bleakly suggests that the human world is a place so full of “misery, vulgarity, and waste” that even a trio of gods would, upon visiting, eventually abandon humanity to its vices rather than waste their time intervening in the face of a lost cause.
Throughout the play, Brecht uses the gods’ point of view to show the decayed state of the world—and he uses their central question of whether they must remake the world in order access the larger argument of whether or not humanity is even worth investing time, energy, and effort into. The trio of gods provide a kind of chorus as they dip in and out of the play’s action—often appearing only in Wong’s dreams—throughout the play. The gods’ stated mission is to decide whether to let the earth remain as it is or do something to change it—they must make this decision by finding enough people who are “living lives worthy of human beings.” In other words, they must locate the world’s good people. The implication, then, is that if the gods can’t find enough “good people,” they will have to eradicate humanity—this notion hovers over the entirety of the play and it adds to the conundrum that Shen Te, the play’s central character, faces each day as she struggles to uphold the mantle of “goodness” which the gods tell her she possesses after she takes them in for the night. Early on in the gods’ mission, they feel a sense of desperation to locate the world’s good people, and Brecht uses the divine’s invented rules to make a commentary upon the human world. The gods are anxious to find a good person—they feel that if they don’t, their intervention will become necessary and they will have proof that their “rules” have failed humanity. The gods pin their hopes on Shen Te—if she succeeds and continues to be “good,” they will be able to depart Earth and rest assured that their demands upon humanity are fair and sufficient. Their investment in the human race is palpable in the early parts of the play, even as their confidence in humanity’s goodness seems shaky at best.
The gods appear in throughout the play to Wong, the water seller, by inserting themselves into his dreams. The gods’ appearances to Wong suggest that they are continually evaluating humanity’s worth. Wong is not one of the “good” people of the world, yet the gods choose him to be their go-between. For the majority of the play, the gods’ reliance upon Wong to deliver reports of how Shen Te is doing—and thus whether there is any goodness left on Earth after all—shows that they are still invested in humanity even as their search for good people elsewhere falters. The gods are repeatedly turned away as they travel the world, and their investment in humanity wanes even as their hopes for Shen Te become increasingly desperate.
Toward the end of the play, after Shen Te reveals that she has been living as her alter ego (the ruthless businessman Shui Ta), Shen Te attempts to engage the gods in a discourse about the cruelty of life on Earth and the impossibility of being good. Shen Te entreats the gods to punish her for her badness, or to at least give her answers. In response, the gods declare that Shen Te is good in spite of her own misgivings about herself. Thus, they declare that the world can remain the same after all and then they swiftly pack up and leave, calling upon a giant pink cloud to bear them back to the heavens. The gods ignore Shen Te’s impassioned cries for help and guidance, instead doling out platitudes about her goodness and hollow wishes that her courage will not ever fail her. At the end of the play, the gods see that Shen Te has failed to be truly good after all—and what’s worse, she has discovered the secret and terrible truth of humanity: no one can “be good and yet […] live [for themselves]” at once. Shen Te wants genuine answers to the conundrum of human life—but the gods, overwhelmed by Shen Te’s honesty, sadness, and genuine internal conflict, choose instead to divest themselves of their involvement in humanity. They decide collectively that they’ve seen enough and so they quickly wash their hands of their failed experiment.
In The Good Woman of Setzuan, Brecht forces his audience to reckon directly with the destruction that humanity has wrought upon the earth. By having the gods abscond at the end of the play, stating that they’d rather “go back to [their] void” than spend another moment on Earth, Brecht indicts both the human world and the divine one, suggesting that both parties are too lazy, frightened, and self-concerned to improve upon the earth.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Humanity vs. The Divine ThemeTracker
Humanity vs. The Divine Quotes in The Good Woman of Setzuan
WONG: I sell water here in the city of Setzuan. It isn’t easy. When water is scarce, I have long distances to go in search of it, and when it is plentiful, I have no income. But in our part of the world there is nothing unusual about poverty. My people think only the gods can save the situation.
SHEN TE: I’d like to be good, it’s true, but there's the rent to pay. And that’s not all: I sell myself for a living. Even so I can’t make ends meet, there’s too much competition. I’d like to honor my father and mother and speak nothing but the truth and not covet my neighbor’s house. I should love to stay with one man. But how? How is it done?
THIRD GOD: Good-bye, Shen Te! Give our regards to the water seller!
SECOND GOD: And above all: be good! Farewell!
FIRST GOD: Farewell!
THIRD GOD: Farewell!
SHEN TE: But everything is so expensive, I don’t feel sure I can do it!
SECOND GOD: That's not in our sphere. We never meddle with economics.
THIRD: One moment. Isn’t it true she might do better if she had more money?
FIRST GOD: Do us a favor, water seller. Go back to Setzuan. Find Shen Te, and give us a report on her. We hear that she’s come into a little money. Show interest in her goodness—for no one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand. Meanwhile we shall continue the search, and find other good people. After which, the idle chatter about the impossibility of goodness will stop!
THIRD GOD: Forgive us for taking this tone with you, Wong, we haven't been getting enough sleep. The rich recommend us to the poor, and the poor tell us they haven’t enough room.
SHEN TE: In our country
A useful man needs luck
Only if he finds strong backers
Can he prove himself useful.
The good can’t defend themselves and
Even the gods are defenseless.
Oh, why don’t the gods have their own ammunition
And launch against badness their own expedition
Enthroning the good and preventing sedition
And bringing the world to a peaceful condition?
[…]
She puts on SHUI TA’S mask and sings in his voice.
You can only help one of your luckless brothers
By trampling down a dozen others.
Why is it the gods do not feel indignation
And come down in fury to end exploitation
Defeat all defeat and forbid desperation
Refusing to tolerate such toleration?
FIRST GOD: Our faith in Shen Te is unshaken!
THIRD GOD: We certainly haven’t found any other good people. You can see where we spend our nights from the straw on our clothes.
WONG: You might help her find her way by—
FIRST GOD: The good man finds his own way here below!
SECOND GOD: The good woman too.
FIRST GOD: The heavier the burden, the greater her strength!
THIRD GOD: We're only onlookers, you know.
WONG: Illustrious ones, at last you're here. Shen Te’s been gone for months and today her cousin's been arrested. They think he murdered her to get the shop. But I had a dream and in this dream Shen Te said her cousin was keeping her prisoner. You must find her for us, illustrious ones!
THIRD GOD: The place is absolutely unlivable! Good intentions bring people to the brink of the abyss, and good deeds push them over the edge. I'm afraid our book of rules is destined for the scrap heap—
SECOND GOD: It's people! They're a worthless lot!
THIRD GOD: The world is too cold!
SECOND GOD: It's people! They're too weak!
FIRST GOD: Dignity, dear colleagues, dignity! Never despair! As for this world, didn't we agree that we only have to find one human being who can stand the place? Well, we found her. True, we lost her again. We must find her again, that's all! And at once!
SHUI TA: I only came on the scene when Shen Te was in danger of losing what I had understood was a gift from the gods. Because I did the filthy jobs which someone had to do, they hate me. My activities were restricted to the minimum, my lord.
SHEN TE: Your injunction
To be good and yet to live
Was a thunderbolt:
It has torn me in two
I can't tell how it was
But to be good to others
And myself at the same time
I could not do it
Your world is not an easy one, illustrious ones!
When we extend our hand to a beggar, he tears it off for us
When we help the lost, we are lost ourselves
And so
Since not to eat is to die
Who can long refuse to be bad?
SHEN TE: It was when I was unjust that I ate good meat
And hobnobbed with the mighty
Why?
Why are bad deeds rewarded?
Good ones punished?
I enjoyed giving
I truly wished to be the Angel of the Slums
But washed by a foster-mother in the water of the gutter
I developed a sharp eye
The time came when pity was a thorn in my side
And, later, when kind words turned to ashes in my mouth
And anger took over
I became a wolf
SHEN TE: What about the old couple? They’ve lost their shop! What about the water seller and his hand? And I’ve got to defend myself against the barber, because I don’t love him! And against Sun, because I do love him! How? How?
[…]
FIRST GOD (from on high): We have faith in you, Shen Te!
SHEN TE: There’ll be a child. And he’ll have to be fed. I can’t stay here. Where shall I go?
FIRST GOD: Continue to be good, good woman of Setzuan!
SHEN TE: But I need my bad cousin!
“How could a better ending be arranged?
Could one change people? Can the world be changed?
Would new gods do the trick? Will atheism?
Moral rearmament? Materialism?
It is for you to find a way, my friends,
To help good men arrive at happy ends.
You write the happy ending to the play!
There must, there must, there's got to be a way!”
