Shaw’s Andrew Undershaft and Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor

In this paper I try to compare Andrew Undershaft in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara with The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in terms of personality, motives, religious beliefs and views on life. Both characters appear to be antagonists at the beginning and are shunned by their peers but as the story progresses, it is revealed that they are strongly determined to save humanity in their own unique way that may be unconventional to most people. This study is going to determine the fact that both Andrew Undershaft and The Inquisitor mirror each other in the sense that they both denounce abject poverty and hunger and suggest that it is in humanity’s best interest to be physically content and secure under the care of an authority rather than to have faith or freedom. In other words, people, if given the choice, will most likely choose “security” over “freedom”.

Keywords:

“Freedom” , “security” , “faith” , “humanitarianism” , “Major Barbara” , “The Brothers Karamazov”