Man Equals Man

Main Characters and Their Development

• Galy Gay, like clay in the hands of fate, appears before the reader as a simple porter whose soul, unacquainted with cunning, gradually succumbs to the will of others and becomes a passive executor of foreign commands. His inner journey is a tragic metamorphosis: from a naive everyman, unaware of evil, to a person who loses his own 'self' in the maelstrom of war and others' ambitions. Jip, Uriah, and Polly are soldiers whose characters are shaped by harsh reality; each tempts Galy in their own way, testing his humanity and the limits of his moral choices. Their images are full of inner contradictions: behind their roughness and belligerence lie exhaustion and despair, and their actions become a mirror for the main character. In this dance of fates and characters, Brecht's main theme is revealed—the fragility of human nature and the ease with which circumstances can destroy or reshape a person, turning him into a faceless part of history's relentless machinery.