THE GOOD PERSON OF SZECHWAN

 Significance of the epilogue

 Shen The : Oh, the divine commandments/ Are not so much use against hunger
 Significance of the street scene to illustrate Epic Theatre
 Epic Theatre is thorough Anti-Aristotelian in its intent and design
 Epic Theatre is essentially a new way of understanding the relation between theatre
and it's audience
 Brecht’s treatment of the problem of moral conduct in the light of Shen The’s
observation, “They are bad. They grudge even a bowl of rice. How can they be
blamed?”
 In gendering the two diff approaches to life, Brecht can be criticizes for working
through sexist stereotypes
 “I would go with the man I love,
…
I would go with the man whom I love”
Do you think the writer is critiquing or endorsing the speaker and the speaker’s
concept of love?
 Brecht’s use of the Alienation effect in the play
 Why does Brecht locate the play in Szechwan? Would it have been thematically better
to locate the play in a contemporary western city?
 The play is not about defining goodness but rather about getting the audience in and
collectively critiquing the system we live in. Do you agree?
 How does Brecht seeks to involve the audience in defining and assessing the concept
of goodness
 In your view, would the presentation improve if the central character, Shen The/Shui
Ta was played by a man? Give answer in the context of Brecht’s theories of alienation
 Assess the title, content and significance of the Song of the Defencelessness of the
Good and the Gods
 Unlike his more famous play, the play is not about stating Marxian ideals but about
working out ways of radicalising a society
 Assess the last scene
 Asses the content and significance of the Song of the Eight Elephant in terms of the
scene where it is placed and in terms of the play
 The play smudges the divisions between the exploiter and the exploited to show us
our helplessness before a cannibalistic capitalist world
 In your view, is the idea of goodness that they play is exploring totally fluid or does
the play identify some essential ingredients of goodness

RHINOCEROS

 The non-realistic style forms the play’s political critique into a commentary on the
human condition
 Examine the view that the play dramatizes the struggle of the heroic individual
against the forces of totalitarian
 Jean
 Logician: The cat has four paws. Isidore and Fricot … are cats
Old Gent: My dog …
Old Gent: Then it’s a cat
 Daisy: Don’t think about Dudard … other’s people’s lives
Berenger: But youre interfering … firm with me
Daisy: That’s … I never loved Dudard
 Grocer: Well, it may be logical … Asiatic or African?
Proprieter: He’s absolutely right! … or anything else!
Grocer: We’re not going to stand for it!
 Do the formal devices in the play dilute or enhance the play’s thematic concerns?
 Critically evaluate the evolution, if any, of Berenger’s engagement with his
environment
 A “contemporary modernist wallowing in anxiety” or a “resistant subject moving
towards changing contemporary processes,” where do you place Jean and why?
 The success and the failure of the symbol of the Rhinoceros
 The Ending


 The play is not so much about totalitarianism but more about our inadequacy to resit
totalitarianism. Asses Berenger’s stance at the end in the light of the statement
 The use of non-realistic devices does not detract from but adds to the politics of the
play.
WAITING FOR GODOT

 Assess the importance of Act II. Is it a case of “Nothing happens, twice” or does it
add to or contradict the thematic concerns of Act I
 Is it a critique of and a warning against the way the western world have evolved in the
decades preceding the writing and the performing of the play?


 Assess the rel. of Vladamir and Estragon, Are they depections of a stationary order or
agents of change?
 Luck’s speech is an explosive illustration of the desires of an underdog in any
oppressive system.
 In your view, what purpose, if any, do the changes in Pozzo, within Act I itself and
from Act I to Act II, serve in terms of the major themes of the play
 A consummate illustration of existential and absurd ideas or a scathing critique of
contemporary capitalism. Where do you place the play and why?
 The author’s omission of women characters in the play has been a topic of
considerable discussion and the play has occasionally been performed by women
actors. How do you assess this omission, and in your view would the play improve if
some or all the characters were played by women?

GHOSTS

 Is a play about ethical rather than physical debility.

 The drawing room is the setting where issues of wide social import are raised.
 Critique of the 19th cent obsession with maintaining a façade of social respectability
 The play as a tragedy of Mrs. Alving
 Critically comment on the theme of euthanasia in the play. In your opinion, does it
provide an adequate solution to the problems that the play raises?
 “Mrs. Alving: Your poor father never found any outlet … father’s home unbearable to
him, Oswald”
 Who is the tragic protagonist in the play
 The play allows us to see how the past can cast long shadows on the present
 Views on naturalism
 Expresses the anxieties of a society whose values are shown to be false and
hupocritical
 In Mrs. Alving, the playwright has created the prototype of the early feminist. Do you
agree? Or asses her character in her conduct with her husband in the past and her son
 “Oh what a coward – what a coward I’ve been” analyse Mrs. ALving’s character
 Regina’s relationship with the patriarchal structure
 Does the play come across as a naturalistic drama or are there aspects that go against
naturalism
 “I almost think we are all ghosts -- all of us … all sorts of old and obsolete beliefs”
Discuss the relevance of the term “ghosts”
 “A poor girl has got to make the best of her life … the joy of life in me too, Mrs.
Alving” How does the speaker plan to assert the “joy of life” in the future
