Analysis - The Man of Destiny

The Man of Destiny is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1895. Shaw (1856–1950) was a prominent playwright who was born of an impoverished middle-class family in Dublin. He became a socialist in 1882 and two years later joined the Fabian Society, an organization of petty bourgeois intellectuals. In his plays he criticized the vices of bourgeois society. He is famous for his brilliant dialogues, full of witty paradoxes and often bitterly satirical.

In The Man of Destiny Shaw depicts Napoleon as a practical business-like man who makes his career at the cost of human lives. The action takes place in a little inn in North Italy. First, we see a lieutenant who has been sent for the letters and dispatches, but has been wound round his little finger by an unknown youth. It turns out that the unknown youth is actually a lady. Napoleon tries to get the letters from her by all means, but she is strong. Finally, she gives him the letters, but asks for one of them, which has been reportedly given to him by mistake. Pretending that she takes care of her close friend, the Lady makes Napoleon think that he’s wife is cheating on him with his friend, and then leaves.

Napoleon is protagonist of the play, and the Lady is antagonist. The author does not describe Napoleon directly; in order to give the impression of him, the author uses his speech and stage directions. From this, we can conclude that Napoleon is an emotional person (a lot of exclamatory sentence used) who comes not from an upper class (colloquial words: “jackass” and so on), but who has absorbed some of its properties (he uses an allusion to Dalila, when talking to the Lady). As for his emotions, they change very quickly. At the beginning of the play, he is shown as a polite and courteous person. Then, while trying to get the letters from the Lady, he is very demanding and exacting (he suggests that he should “tear” the letters from her “by force”). He is also kind, because tries to calm down the Lady when she sinks on her knees. We can see that he is embarrassed with the help of repetitions “No. No. There. There. Be calm, be calm”. He also has an explosive character as he quickly “utters a yell of rage”, speaks in a “furious whisper”. Besides, he believes happiness to be the most tedious thing in the world.

In contrast, the author describes the Strange Lady with the help of words: “She is tall and extraordinary graceful with a delicately intelligent face: character in the chin: all keen, refined, and original. She is very feminine, but by no means weak.” We can learn more about her from her speech and actions: she uses no colloquialisms, but some bookish words, quotations (“Caesar’s wife is above suspicion”), and paradoxes (“The truth is the one thing nobody will believe”), her language is more elevated in comparison with Napoleon’s. She is a very good actress and able to show a wide range of emotions. She is very smart und cunning (she managed to trick the lieutenant out of letters). She addresses to Napoleon is several ways: “General”, “My Emperor”. It is not very difficult for her to pretend crying or to make Napoleon think that his wife is unfaithful to him, only by hints. She is a very good psychologist.

The author uses a third-person objective narrative: we can see what the characters do, but we cannot hear their thoughts and we only have to guess about their motives, which is quite typical for plays. Besides, the author uses a lot of stylistic devices. His language is very rich; there are bookish words as well as colloquialisms, which help the author to describe the characters. He also uses metaphors (“cut a very foolish figure”, “falling into your hands”), oxymoron (“bitter-sweetly”, “happy tears”), emotional climax (“a vain, silly, extravagant creature”), repetitions (“there-there”) and aforementioned quotations and paradoxes.

As for the syntactic structure, here the author also uses some stylistic devises. They are ellipsis (“Nothing.”, “Good.”, “And your happiness.” and so on), which makes the dialogues more realistic; polysyndeton (“a very clever and sensible and interesting woman”), inversion (“and much good may they do you”), which helps to emphasize some parts of sentences. The author mostly writes in short, simple sentences. Long paragraphs are used to express character’s thoughts and attitude. There are a lot of exclamatory sentences because Napoleon is highly emotional and the Lady pretends to be such a person.

The story is devoted to Napoleon’s private life and to hidden sides of people’s lives. The author managed to show us that every person has their own secrets and weak sides, no matter what status they have in the society. We learn from the story that we should not think of a person judging by his status. The most important things are hidden from our first sight, and a person can be one step before unhappy even if they are rich, have a great career and do not care about happiness.