Karen Kwan

EWRT 2

Essay #3 MAJOR BARBARA

The Ultimate Crime, Poverty

Money, money, money – nearly everything in this world is always involved with money in some ways. Growing up in a family that runs a multinational business helped me understand Shaw’s ideals. In “Major Barbara”, Shaw looked at socialism more as a business proposition. Shaw voices his beliefs through the character Undershaft. He asserted the theory “poverty is the worst of crimes.” to his economic socialist feeling about money and power. Undershaft’s principles of money and power could be a better weapon against poverty.

The extremist ideas of Andrew Undershaft, the ideas of his aristocratic relatives, represent the ideals of society. Undershaft’s devilish power and wit make the outcome inevitable, and at the end everyone recognizes the fusion of money with morality. Undershaft is a great arms industrialist in Europe. He is a strong man who has learnt by experience that his natural grip hurts ordinary people. Undershaft believes that greater power and money are the elements that controls the world—not the Salvation Army of God. One of his ideas that echoes throughout the play is that “the greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty (137)”.

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Shaw compared the differences in dreams from the Salvation Army and the dreams that a person can carry out by his/her self. People are happy because they have a job and they would not have to worry about poverty. Undershaft is a creator of the jobs; he is the one who gives real hope to the people. His munitions factory was spotless and neat. It is run with perfect efficiency.

“Cleanliness and respectability do not need justification; they justify themselves. I see no darkness here, no dreadfulness. In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger ...

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