Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First of all, I'd like to mention that 'Major Barbara' just like the female protagonist of the play, 'saved my soul' not through the salvation army but by being the first book I had read in almost a fortnight! The depression that had followed was unbearable and 'Major Barbara' literally pulled me out of it today, when I started reading it again!
Now about the play:
You read a lot of plays. Some are tragic, some are comic and some are simply Shavian. You go about the world, with your own notions and then along comes Shaw and turns your world upside down. When you read Major Barbara , for some time you are a little confused with Shaw's ideology and you begin to wonder whether poverty really is the biggest sin and whether man's real aim is to avoid being poor? Is pity really the scavenger of misery? And charity a rich man's excuse to compensate for those who are sacrificed for their sake?
This play, more than any other Shavian play makes you think. Sometimes, it makes no sense and sometimes, you just can't tell whether your thinking has been wrong all these years or whether Shaw smoked something weird before he conceived Major Barbara ! With this play, than any other and through Undershaft, Shaw reverses your concept of good and bad, moral and immoral.




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