Выполнила: студентка 4 курса гр. 02194 Бадмаева Л.Б
Проверила: преподаватель Федотова Н.А

Analysis “The man of Destiny”

The text under analysis is entitled “The man of Destiny”, written by a prominent playwright George Bernard Shaw. George Bernard Shaw was born in 26th of July in 1856 in a middle class family in Dublin. He was the second (after Shakespeare) the most popular play writer in the English theatre. His first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Besides, he is known of his outspokenness and “barbed humor”, brilliant dialogues, full of witty paradoxes and often bitterly satirical. Bernard Shaw’s main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Among them are “Saint Joan”, Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and Superman, Pygmalion and “The man of Destiny”.
The man of Destiny is an 1897 play. It was published as a part of Plays Pleasant, which also included Arms and the Man, Candida and You never Can Tell. The story takes plays in the 17 century. It consists play of dialogues that includes author’s remarks in brackets. Bernard Shaw called his play “The man of Destiny”, because it was a name given to Napoleon Bonaparte as reflecting his own belief, for he was a fatalist.
The story is referred to Drama. Drama is a genre of literature represented by works intended for the stage.
At first the story starts with the lady appeared. She managed to disguise herself as a man and thus stole Napoleon’s letters. Further on Napoleon demands his letters but the lady wants to keep one letter, which was written by her female friend. To please him, she always tries her tricks on Napoleon. At first he is amenable to ladies tricks, but than he understood everything and treats her to take the letters by force. Finally the lady returns him his dispatches. She also explains Napoleon that it is a love letter of his wife, written to her lover Barras. The story ends with the Lady going away and offering Napoleon to read the letter of his own dishonor.
In the story we see the closed plot structure as it has all the elements of it. The exposition is given in the form of description. It is said that the story takes play in the little in North Italy. Everybody knows the lady tricked out the lieutenant is the Inciting. The dialog between the lady and the lieutenant is supposed to be the rising action. Further on the story reaches its climax, when the Napoleon knows that the letter is a love one. Napoleon’s reaction after knowing everything is a falling action. And finally the story comes to the denouement when Napoleon orders the lady to be gone.
In the story we meet two main characters that is the lady and Napoleon. To describe the Lady, the author Shaw uses the mixed method of characterization. On the one hand, the author describes her directly with the help of such epithets: extraordinary graceful, feminine, delicately intelligent face. And on the other hand we can understand her character through her actions and behavior. So as we have mentioned the lady is quite beautiful, moreover she is cunning and a talented actress as well, as she managed to steal the dispatches and threats Napoleon what she wants. At the same time the lady is an intelligent person, because her speech is quite literary and also in her speech she uses such stylistic device as allusion: Caesar’s wife is above suspicion, hence we can conclude she is from the upper class family. Besides it is important to say, the lady is brave as well, because not every person can speak to Napoleon. As for Napoleon the author describes him in indirect method of charaterisation, as in the text we can not meet any direct description of him. To describe Napoleon we can say that he is a great, famous, majestic emperor. It is apparently seen in his behavior. Besides he acts as a real good diplomat, he is a good one in leading the conversation. Among the traits of his character, emotionality can be singled out as well. It is clearly seen from his words and behavior. For example, he uses lots of exclamations “Dalila, Dalila” and also when the lady suddenly fall on her knees, at first Napoleon was embarrassed and then uttered the yell of rage. In spite that Napoleon is a very masterful person, at the same time, he is a little bit sensitive. For example when, the lady falls on her knees, at once he becomes soft and tries to calm her down. Above all preceding, we can say, that both the lady and Napoleon are round and static characters. Because they both have lots of traits of character and they characters do not change within the story. I think that Napoleon and the lady are antagonists to each other, because they both have their “task”: Napoleon wants to returns his letters and the Lady helps her female friend with the letter. And thus, they both stands against to each other.
The story is written partially narrative and partially a dialog. The author employs the third person narration to sound neutral and objective. The atmosphere of the story is ironic, humorous. The tone is quite emotional. The vocabulary is mixed, author uses colloquial speech because of many dialogues and also common literary. A lot of incomplete, elliptical sentences (General, Good, Nothing), contracted forms (I’ve, I’ll) are also used. The sentences are quite short and simple. Shaw employs a lot of stylistic devices to make the story vivid and bright. Among them both lexical and syntactical stylistic devices are used. As for lexical stylistic devices there are: allusion (Dalila, Dalila), anaphora ( You can fight…You are not afraid…You teach us…), detachment ( I’m going to see you loose your honor… and your happiness), epithets ( extraordinary graceful, delicately intelligent, radiant smile), metaphor (smiling through her tears, she-devil, she-cat), irony (Caesar’s wife is above suspicion), oxymoron (bitter-sweetly), simile(as gross, as a gull, she touches her eyes as if to wipe away a tear), understatement (I shall take them, if necessary, with a little ceremony as I took the handkerchief). Among syntactical stylistic devices there are: antithesis (I’m only a weak woman, and you are a brave man), aposiopesis (I assure you…), polysyndeton (you are very clever and sensible and interesting woman), parallelism (to make a scene, to fight a duel, to break up his household, to injure his career), repetition (Pray! Pray! Tut! Tut!), as well as a linking repetition (a letter written by a woman to a man, a man not her husband) “Are your own demands reasonable?”, “What is the secret of your power?” - is rhetorical questions. Besides the story is full of exclamations - What! My Emperor! Moreover Shaw uses paradox, because the dénouement of the story is quite unexpected for the reader. As we can see the story is rich in stylistic devices and the powerful effect produced by them is unquestionable. All them enriches the story, makes it impressive and vivid.
The theme of the story is human character. The main idea of the story is to show that even famous and masterful personalities have their weak points. So the great emperor Napoleon also has his weak points – problems in his private life. In fact any person has his weak points and it does not depend on his status or the role in the society.
Personally, I like the story very much. I like its characters especially the lady. It was really funny to see her behavior and how she tries her tricks on Napoleon. The story is a humorous one, so all the time it makes me laugh. I think Shaw proves to be a real master. Due to the vivid stylistic coloring, and author’s skills the play “The man of Destiny” is one of the most brilliant literature work of George Bernard Shaw.