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Books by George Bernard
Shaw
The
Adventures
of
the Black Girl in Her Search for God
/
Pygmalion /
Saint Joan /
Major Barbara
Man and Superman /
Arms and the Man /
Heartbreak House /
The Philanderer /
Mrs. Warren's Profession
My Fair Lady /
Back to Methuselah /
An Unsocial Socialist /
Shaw on Shakespeare
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The
Adventures
of
the Black Girl in Her Search for God
By George Bernard Shaw
No Complete Explanation of the
Universe
Shavian Excerpts with Commentary by
Rudolph Lewis
The
Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God
is an allegorical journey, in which Shaw dons
the mask of a young African woman raised by missionaries, yet
inquisitive – was inspired when Bernard Shaw "was held up
in Knysna [South Africa] for five weeks in the African summer and English
winter of 1932. Shaw believes in divine inspiration,
"ancient and modern," but also in "observation
and introspection" and realizes, from personal experience we assume, the "instrument on which the inspiring force
plays maybe a very faulty one . . . making the most ridiculous
nonsense of his message."
Of course, Black Girl would ask Shaw why does
the "inspiring force" (God) has to be a
"He." She is armed with a knobkerry (a carved stick)
to smash the "ridiculous nonsense" that occurs when
she interviews God and his representatives. Black Girl discovers
how "water from the new fountain" is
"sloshed" into "the contents of the dirty old
bucket" and concludes that "we are objects of pity to
the superficial but clearheaded atheists ["the Caravan of
the Curious"] who
are content without metaphysics and can see nothing in the whole
business but its confusions and absurdities."
Black Girl encounters the various Gods of the
Old Testament (represented by Noah, Job and Micah) and the Gods
of the New Testament (represented by Jesus, Peter, and Paul).
She finally settles down with Voltaire (St. Francis?) tending her own
garden. Her garden confidant persuades her to marry an Irishmen
(a communist) and we
leave her with three children. While tending her
"garden" only now and then do the old questions of her
journey arise.
Is it because her own decisions and acts have
created a world of herself? Or is it that Shaw troubled with an
ending makes a joke?
* * *
Black Girl's
Religious Questions
to the Gods and her ethical tests of the
truth of their answers:
The Mamba God – Noah’s God, cruel,
bloody, destructive (kills the mamba), as he has tens of
thousands. The Lord of Hosts (of
plagues and blood sacrifices), the Black Girl rejects and his
“wicked nonsense.” Black Girl's responds to this boisterous
God “in the name of
the true God whom I seek I will scotch you as you scotched that
poor mamba.”
The Rattlesnake God – Job’s God,
reasonable, gives snake an egg (a token?) and it returns to the forest. A
God who likes to argue and sneer when questioned closely. “Why he made
the world both good and bad" is a very sore point. The Black Girl rejects him and
concludes, “There are too many old men pretending to be gods
in this forest.”
The Godless Preacher Ecclesiastes (Koheleth)
– clean shaven
white young man in Greek tunic. Seeks Wisdom in Greek reason. To
him the Black Girl responds, “I have learned from you that to
know God is to be God. You have strengthened my soul.”
The Nameless Lion (King Richard) –
handsome and orderly, she caresses his throat and leaves him
decisively.
The God of Micah the Morasthite (the Roaring
Prophet) – For Micah, God requires one to do justice and love
mercy and walk humbly with Him.
To which the Black Girl responds, “This is
a third God, and I like him much better than the one who wanted
sacrifices and the one who wanted me to argue with him so that
he might sneer at my weakness and ignorance. But doing justice
and shewing mercy is only a small part of life when one is not a
baas or a judge. And what is the use of walking humbly if you
don’t know where you are walking to.”
To which the Prophet replied, “walk humbly
and God will guide you. What is it to you whither He is leading
you?”
The Black Girl responds, “He gave me eyes
to guide myself. He gave me a mind and left me to use it. How
can I now turn on Him and tell Him to see for me and to think
for me.” Micah replied with a fearful roar.
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The Myop & the God of
Conditoned Reflex (I.V. Pavlov?) –
“Effects on what?” said the Black
Girl.
“On a dog’s saliva” said the
myop. “Are you any the wiser?” she said. “I am not
interested in wisdom. In fact I do not know what it
means and have no reason to believe that it exists. My
business is to learn something that was not known
before. I impart that knowledge to the world, and
thereby add to the body of ascertained scientific
truth.”
“How much better will the world be
when it is all knowledge and no mercy?” said the Black
Girl. “Have you brains enough to invent some decent
way of finding out what you want to know?”
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“Have you ever considered the effect of
your experiments on other people’s minds and characters? Is it
worth while losing your own soul and damning everybody else’s
to find out something about a dog’s spittle?”
Roman Soldier with Spear Guarding the
Cross – “On your knees, blackamoor, before the
instrument and symbol of Roman justice, Roman law, Roman order
and Roman peace.” Black Girl “hated the cross and thought it
a great pity that Jesus had not peacefully and painlessly and
naturally, full of years and wisdom, protecting his
granddaughters (her imagination always completed the picture
with at least twenty promising black granddaughters) against the
selfishness and violence of their parents.”
“But the black girl side-stepped the spear
and swung her knobkerry so heavily on the nape of his neck that
he went down sprawling and trying vainly to co-ordinate the
movement of his legs sufficiently to rise.”
“This is the blackamoor instrument and
symbol of all those fine things. How do you like it?” said
Black Girl.
The God of Love (Jesus, the Conjurer)
– “I’m the poorest of poor whites; yet I have thought of
myself as a king. But that was when the wickedness of men had
driven me crazy.”
—Who is God?
For the conjurer, God is within. He is our
father. “Why not our mother?” asked Black Girl. “My father
beat me from the time I was little until I was big enough to lay
him out with my knobkerry,” said Black Girl. “And even after
that he tried to sell me to a white bass-soldier who had left
his wife across the sea. I have always refused to say ‘ Our
father which art in heaven.’ I always say ‘Our
grandfather.’ I will not have a God who is my father.”
—What God Wants of Us?
“Love them that hates you. Bless them that
curse you. Never forget that two blacks do not make a white.”
Black girl said, “Well, let you be king
Solomon and let me be Queen of Sheba, same as in the Bible. I
come to you and say that I love you. That means I have come to
take possession of you. I come with the love of a lioness and
eat you up and make you a part of myself. From this time you
will have to think, not of what pleases you, but of what pleases
me. I will stand between you and yourself, between you and God.
Is not that a terrible tyranny? Love is a devouring thing. Can
you imagine heaven with love in it?”
“We have to live with people and must make
the best of them. But does it not shew that our souls need
solitude as much as our bodies need love? We need the help of
one another’s bodies and the help of one another’s minds;
but our souls need to be alone with God; and when people come
loving you and wanting your soul as well as your mind and body,
you cry ‘Keep your distance: I belong to myself, not to
you.’
“This ‘love one another’ of yours is
worse mockery to me who am in search of God than it is to the
warrior who must fight against murder and slavery, or the hunter
who must slay or see his children starve. . . .
“I tell you these cure-all commandments of
yours are like the pills the cheap jacks sell us: they are
useful once in twenty times perhaps, but in the other nineteen
they are of no use. Besides, I am not seeking commandments, I am
seeking God.”
“Continue your search; and God be with
you” said the conjurer. “To find him, such as you must go
past me.” And with that he vanished.
“That is perhaps your best trick” said
the Black Girl; “though I am sorry to lose you; for my mind
you are a lovable man and mean well.
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The God of Peter the Rock With a
Cathedral on His Shoulders –
“But you are not a rock; and it is
too heavy for you,” Black Girl said, expecting every
moment to see him crushed by its weight.”
“No fear” he said, grinning
pleasantly at her. “It is made entirely of paper.”
And he dance past her, making all the bells in the
cathedral tinkle merrily.
Before he was out of sight several
others, dressed in different costumes of black and white
and all very carefully soaped and brushed, came along
carrying smaller and mostly much uglier paper Churches.
They all cried to her |
“Do not believe the fisherman. Do not listen to those other
fellows. Mine is the true Church.”
"At last she had to turn aside into the
forest to avoid them; for they began throwing stones at one
another; and as their aim was almost as bad as if they were
blind, the stones came flying all over the road. So she
concluded that she would not find God to her taste among them."
A Wandering Jew (Paul, the Apostle)
– “Has who come?” said the Black Girl. “He who promised
to come,” said the Jew. “He who said that I must tarry
‘til he comes. I have tarried beyond all reason. If He does
not come soon now it will be too late; for men learn nothing
except how to kill one another in greater and greater
numbers.”
“That won’t be stopped by anybody
coming” said the Black Girl.
“But He will come in glory, sitting on the
right hand of God” cried the Jew. “He said so. He will set
everything right.”
“If you wait for other people to come and
set everything right” said the Black Girl “you will wait for
ever. At that the Jew uttered a wail of despair; spat on her,
and tottered away.
Black Girl was by this time quite out of
conceit with old men; so she was glad to shake him off.
The God of Evolution & the Caravan of
the Curious –
“They are thoughtless, and waste much time quarreling about
trifles” he said. “And they ask questions for the sake of
asking questions.”
“Are you in search of God?” said the
first gentleman. “Had you not better be content with Mumbo
Jumbo, or whatever you call the god of your tribe? You will not
find any of ours an improvement on him.”
“We have a very miscellaneous collection of
Mumbo Jumbos” said the third gentleman, “and not one that we
can honestly recommend to you.”
“That may be so” said the Black Girl.
“But you had better be careful. The missionaries teach us to
believe in your gods. It is all the instruction we get. If we
find out that you do not believe in them and are their enemies
we may come and kill you. There are millions of us; and we can
shoot as well as you.”
* * *
Elsewhere, in pointing to
The
Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, I stated that maybe
that Shaw, who wrote this work while in South Africa, used the
mask of the African girl possibly because there is great
ignorance about Africans or black people in general. But we
should in fairness allow Shaw to state his own case, for he
appends his fable with a long explanation of the text. The final
paragraphs read as follow:
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And now I think the adventures of the
black girl as revealed to me need no longer puzzle
anyone. They could hardly have happened to a white girl
steeped from her birth in the pseudo-Christianity of the
Churches. I take it that the missionary lifted her
straight out of the native tribal fetishism into an
unbiased contemplation of the Bible with its series of
gods marking stages in the development of the conception
of God from the monster Bogey Man to the Father; then to
the spirit without body, parts, nor passions; and
finally to the definition of that spirit in the words
God is love.
For the primitive two [sic] her
knobkerry suffices; but when she reaches the end she has
to point out that Love is not enough (like Edith Cavell
making the same discovery about Patriotism) and that it
is wiser to take Voltaire's advice by cultivating her
garden and bringing up her piccaninnies than to spend
her life imagining that she can find a complete
explanation of the universe by laying about her with a
knobkerry.
Still, the knobkerry has to be used
as far as the way is clear. Mere agnosticism leads
nowhere. When the question of the existence of Noah's
idol is raised on the point, vital to high civilization,
whether our children shall continue to be brought up to
worship it and compound for their sins by sacrificing to
it, or, more cheaply, by sheltering themselves behind
another's sacrifice to it, then whoever hesitates to
bring down the knobkerry with might and main is
ludicrously unfit to have any part in the government of
a modern State.
The importance of a message to that
effect at the present world crisis is probably at the
bottom of my curious and sudden inspiration to write
this tale instead of cumbering theatrical literature
with another stage comedy. |
Source: George Bernard Shaw.
The
Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God
. New York: Dodd, Mead
& Company, 1933. * *
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* * * posted 2
November 2007 |
