Major Barbara (Penguin Classics)
by George Bernard Shaw, Dan H. Laurence, Margery Morgan, Elizabeth T. Forter
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dan H. Laurence, Elizabeth T. Forter, George Bernard Shaw, Margery MorganEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-05-01
ISBN: 0140437908
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of Major Barbara (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: A deluge of brilliance, wit, political nonsense
Summary: 5 Stars
Shaw can be absolutely captivating even when he is being an evangelist for political philosophies that the twentieth century has proven to be nothing but vehicles for repression and mass murder (Communism - Shaw approved of Lenin even when the evidence showed him to be pure evil). This play-among his best (if you can see the movie with Rex Harrison, do not miss it)- has such brilliant dialogue and sparkling humor that it is easy to forget that one is being preached to. Shaw thinks human evil is due to socially deprived environments. Ergo, pour money into poor neighborhoods and social evils will vanish. Unfortunately for Shaw's argument, poverty and human evil are two different things entirely and only intersect occasionally and coincidently. The poor can be poor due to lack of opportunity or due to a culture of self-destructiveness (illegitmacy, drug/alcohol use, disdain for values that lead to achievement, disdain for skills that lead to steady employability). It is difficult to sustain an argument that the poor in the USA are so due to a lack of opportunity when recent immigrants have pretty much taken the available opportunities and ran with them, rapidly entering the middle classes within a generation of arriving here. Shaw simply cannot believe that anyone would choose to remain poor. Well, they can and do, when getting ahead means putting in 40+ hours a week, and not loafing all day on a street corner in an inebriated/stoned condition. Accepting that fact would have saved millions of lives that were sacrificed in the last century in the attempt to build a perfect "worker's paradise".Leaving the silly premise behind the play aside, Shaw has crafted a startling piece of theatre and uses his magisterial command of the English language to amuse, provoke, and amaze the audience.
Summary of Major Barbara (Penguin Classics)
Andrew Undershaft, a millionaire armaments manufacturer, loves money and despises poverty. His estranged daughter Barbara, on the other hand, shows her love for the poor by throwing her energies into her work as a Major in the Salvation Army, and sees her father as another soul to be saved. But when the Army needs funds to keep going, it is Undershaft who saves the day with a large cheque forcing Barbara to examine her moral assumptions. Are they right to accept money that has been obtained by Death and Destruction'? Full of lively comedy and sparkling debate, Major Barbara is one of Shaw's most forward-looking plays, brilliantly testing the tensions between religion, wealth and power, benevolence and equality, and metaphors and realities of war.Classics Books
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