"JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND" (GEORGE BERNARD SHAW).   Term Paper ID:22568 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines play's dramatic critique of cultural & political issues from Marxist perspective.... More...

8 Pages / 1800 Words 6 sources, 13 Citations, MLA Format $32.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Examines play's dramatic critique of cultural & political issues from Marxist perspective. Paper Introduction: George Bernard Shaw wrote a number of what have come to be called philosophical comedies, and three of these--Major Barbara, Man and Superman, and John Bull's Other Island--have been viewed as a trilogy in this genre because all of them deal with the issue of the bankruptcy of nineteenth-century liberalism in the face of the prevailing forces of sex, nationalism, and poverty. John Bull's Other Island specifically represents a counter to the neo-Gaelic movement then under the leadership of William Butler Yeats. Indeed, the "other island" referred to in the title is Ireland, and John Bull is the name for the British government, much as we refer to the American government as Uncle Sam. Shaw does not make an overt Marxian appeal in this play, but his analysis of the exploitation of the Irish by the British demonstrates an understanding of the nature of Karl Marx's ideas Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Peter Keegan is the one Irish character intended to represent thebest rather than the worst in the human being in Ireland, and he is alsothe character who most clearly sees through Broadbent, calling him an ass.Keegan is the voice of reason and opposes the exploitation of the land bythe British: Broadbent and Doyle, partners in a civil engineering firm, decide to build for their syndicate a resort hotel and golf course to replace the farms whose mortgages they have foreclosed in Roscullen. The nature of the story shows how both classes participate in aintricate dance around the issues of social control, exploitation, andprofit: The village of Roscullen is poor. John Bull's Other Island specifically representsa counter to the neo-Gaelic movement then under the leadership of WilliamButler Yeats. Marx wrote: The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. Bishop of Everywhere. Tom Broadbent is the idealistic liberal who is the target of thehumor in John Bull's Other Island. Marx describes these antagonisms in his writings, shows howthey developed, how they operate in society, and what the consequences willbe for the historical development of society. He sees the interplay of classes in terms of domination, andat the present juncture, it is bourgeois society that dominates. In fact, Shaw proposes Home Rule for all countries in the British Empire (Hill 89). Thomas Broadbent is the leading promoter ofthis new venture, and he is supported by Larry Doyle, an expatriateIrishman and native of the village now eager to exploit his formerneighbors. Broadbent is often blissfully unawareof how foolish he is, and he succeeds precisely because he never sees howwrong he is. . The working-class Irish, which in a clearMarxist conception would be the exploited proletariat ripe for revolution,is not depicted by Shaw in such simple economic terms: As Shaw depicts them the Irish villagers are small men, mean- spirited, stingy, and self-centered, and quite incapable of extricating themselves from the economic slough into which they have fallen, or of comprehending their national problem in any but its most trivial aspects (Valency 239). Works CitedCrompton, Louis. Shaw sees socialism as a social benefit and a necessarydemonstration of concern for all classes, but he has no romantic illusionsabout the proletariate and little faith in the ability of the proletariateto rise up and break its chains. For Marx, it is inevitable that the proletariatewill rise up and throw off its shackles, but for Shaw it is just as likelythat the proletariate will emulate the bourgeoisie and try to make aprofit. Shaw is equally critical of the British and Irish points of view onthese issues, and neither side has much awareness of the meaning of therelationship they have between them. "Shaw's Challenge to Liberalism." In G.B. These Irish peasants are faced by British developers who are part ofa syndicate that wants to transform the village of Roscullen into a payingventure by building a hotel. . An Englishman has some sense about working: he never does more than he can help. Marx's analyses tend to differentiate clearly between the classes andto indicate which class is exploitive and which the exploited. Marx writes in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party": "The historyof all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Tucker473). Norton, 1978.Valency, Maurice. The Marxist perspective developed by Shaw shows how theexploited participate eagerly in their own exploitation, and this is hardlya class that would seem capable of being radicalized to take revolutionaryaction. His innocence is born of ignorance but serves him well.Larry Doyle is the prime example of what happens to a member of the lowerclass when carried along by fascination with the upper class, and here theupper class is British and the lower class Irish. New York: Schocken, 1983.----------------------- 3 Its people are wretched and niggardly, difficult and suspicious. Marx portrays the social classes and their struggles in more clear-cut terms than does Shaw. (Tucker 475).Marx's language here, as in all his writings, is the language of conflictand struggle. George Bernard Shaw. . Arms and the Man and John Bull's Other Island. Kaufmann (ed.). What Shaw does in this play is criticize the sort of man hehimself had been, for there is much of the immature Shaw in Tom Broadbent.Shaw did not create a character who was simply a caricature of the rightwing in politics in order to make his liberal stance seem more palatable;instead, Shaw points up the foibles and failures of the liberal position asa criticism of why that position seems to e failing at the end of thenineteenth century: I think Shaw chose to depict a Liberal and "a bit of a Unitarian" for the barb of his satire because he could fathom the pompousness of a Liberal with more self-knowledge than he could give to the pompousness of a Tory and a churchman (Smith 5). Marx says his own epoch isthe epoch of the bourgeoisie that has simplified the class antagonisms thatalways define a society. Boston: Twayne, 1978.Shaw, George Bernard. This struggle defines the ongoing stream of historical materialism,based on the necessary social conditions defined by economic relations: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces (Tucker 4).The class consisting of the bourgeoisie developed during the feudal period,and as the bourgeoisie got the upper hand it ended all feudal, patriarchal,idyllic relations: It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest. For Shaw, both the English and the Irish emerge asscoundrels. Each play begins by presenting us with a high-minded idealist, who takes himself with earnest seriousness and looks upon himself as an enlightened reformer. Roscullen furnishes an apt illustration of the brutalizing effects of a long tradition of oppression and exploitation, a tradition the residents secretly respect and hope to emulate when they are sufficiently advanced themselves (Valency 239).The envy the proletariate feels for the bourgeoisie is something Marx doesnot feature as does Shaw. Shaw does not make an overtMarxian appeal in this play, but his analysis of the exploitation of theIrish by the British demonstrates an understanding of the nature of KarlMarx's ideas on exploitation and on the alienation of the working classbecause they do not own what they produce. 88-99.Hill, Eldon C. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982.Tucker, Robert C. Yet hesees the British working class also as superior to the Irish working worldfrom which he came: I tell you, an Irish peasant's industry is not human: it's worse than the industry of a coral insect. New York: W.W. Father Keegan, a forerunner of today's environmentalists, raises objections; but he is powerless in preventing the desecration (Hill 87).Shaw is especially critical of the British in his "Preface forPoliticians," added to the published play in 19 6, and there he writesabout the curse of nationalism: The Preface expresses a far-from-optimistic view of the Empire because of Britain's failure to mete out justice to Ireland and to other members of the Commonwealth. Many of them have suffered great injustice at the hands of their former landlords, and their past sufferings are a rich heritage which they exhibit on all occasions. . The dramatic form of each play has puzzled critics: What Shaw does is to mix together in each play a Moliиresque comedy and a Socratic dialogue. Rather, he sees the exploitation asmutual in a way that perpetuates the classes, which seem to need oneanother rather than to be completely at odds. The Marx-Engels Reader. Indeed, the "other island" referred to in the title isIreland, and John Bull is the name for the British government, much as werefer to the American government as Uncle Sam. While Shawis at times a Marxist in his political writings, he does not makedistinctions as clearly as that and finds exploitation to be a human traitdivided up among the classes. . Indeed, Shaw delves into thesocial structure of society so thoroughly and honestly that he neverpresents the sort of simple analysis of class conflict that infuses much ofMarxist thought. The Englishman in the play believes that everything is right with theworld so long as the British Empire stands and Britain rules. He is then made the subject of a comedy in the style of Moliиre, not with the idea of unmasking his hypocrisy, but of exposing the comic contradictions within his ideals and temperament (Crompton 89). Doyle has lived inEngland for some time, and he has been infected with the British fault ofabsolute confidence in the ability of the upper class Brit to prevail.Doyle does indeed have some misgivings about this venture, but he allowsthe enthusiastic Broadbent to bull ahead, trailing Doyle behind. Marx argues that bourgeois society is a systemof domination, with the bourgeoisie dominant over the proletariat. Shaw, R.J. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones (Tucker 474).Marx says that bourgeois society has simplified the antagonisms thatexisted before so that now there are only two great hostile camps standingas two classes directly facing one another--the bourgeoisie and theproletariat. Shaw's Marxism is not an unquestioned and slavish reiteration ofMarx's theories. . New York: Bantam, 1993.Smith, Warren Sylvester. Keegan doesnot see the world of British rule in such rosy terms: The world, sir, is very clearly a place of torment and penance, a place where the fool flourishes and the good and wise are hated and persecuted, a place where men and women torture one another in the name of love; where children are scourged and enslaved in the name of parental duty and education; where the weak in body are poisoned and mutilated in the name of healing, and the weak in character are put to the horrible torture of imprisonment, not for hours but for years, in the name of justice (Shaw 228).Keegan sees this sort of world in spite of British rule rather than becauseof it, but Broadbent simply fails to see any ill he does not want to see.Shaw sees many of these ills as specifically a result of British rule,British militarism, and the dependency fostered in the various colonialregions because of British rule. The Cart and the Trumpet. Shaw himself linked the three plays in aGerman edition under the title Comedies of Science and Religion, and theplays share a common mood and a common dramatic structure as well as acommon theme. (Shaw 19 ). Theeconomic system that is explained in this fashion came about with thedemise of the feudal society that preceded it. Louis Crompton is the critic who links Major Barbara, Man andSuperman, and John Bull's Other Island as representing a challenge tonineteenth-century liberalism. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965. The play is seen as a dour comedy thatis enlivened by broad caricature: It depicts with a pungent blend of disgust and compassion the continuing conquest of Ireland by the British invader, specifically the conquest of an Irish village by an English land developer who plans to convert a bankrupt estate into a tourist resort (Valency 238-239).Shaw does not create a simplistic vision in which the Irish are the goodand downtrodden while the British are the overlords exploiting them foreverything possible. George Bernard Shaw wrote a number of what have come to be calledphilosophical comedies, and three of these--Major Barbara, Man andSuperman, and John Bull's Other Island--have been viewed as a trilogy inthis genre because all of them deal with the issue of the bankruptcy ofnineteenth-century liberalism in the face of the prevailing forces of sex,nationalism, and poverty. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.