The Atma Jyoti Blog

There are few original thinkers at any time on this earth. George Bernard Shaw was one of the most original thinkers and writers of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, he is known almost entirely through the motion pictures and television dramatizations made from some of his plays. Although his plays were insightful and often humorous, his real work consisted of the extremely lengthy introductions to those plays in their printed forms. There we find a brilliance of thought and expression that completely eclipses the plays themselves. Shaw was undoubtedly the greatest English-speaking philosopher of his time, and remains so today.

The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, written in 1932, was as bold as it was devastating. It is a ruthless unmasking of people’s “gods”–none of which have anything to do with God. When reading it, please keep in mind that the people the black girl encounters are not meant to be satires of the Divine, but satirical exposés of the foolish ideas that are current about God. In the same way, the Conjurer is not a depiction of Jesus, but a depiction of the childish way in which Jesus is presented by Christianity. It is this illusion that speaks to the black girl, not the true Jesus. The same is true of Shaw’s presentation of the popular idea of Mohammed. Reading between the lines we see that Shaw is an uncompromising supernaturalist, more than merely discontent with the prevailing ideas in religion. Again, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God is not a mockery of religion but of the ignorance that substitutes itself for authentic religion.

As is obvious from many parts of this fable, Shaw was outraged at the abuse of Africans by Europeans, and certainly considered all humans to be of equal dignity and value. The inclusion, then, of certain disrespectful epithets applied to Africans was to point out European racism as well as to show that Africans sometimes absorbed it to a degree and even applied such expressions to themselves. His intention was thoroughly positive, as was Jerome Kern’s when in 1927 he wrote the opening words of Showboat: “N——rs all work on the Mississippi; n——rs all work while the white folks play.” He wanted the audience to be shocked and to protest so he could reply: “Why do you object to the word when you do not object to the treatment that goes along with it?”

This short story by Shaw is so full of insight that we have added it in full to our website. Read The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God by George Bernard Shaw here.