The play is based on a Chinese fable and placed in the Caucasia (Georgia). Brecht uses this story as a metaphor to pose the question of social ownership.Who owns the land: the one who has the deed or the one who tills it. Who owns the factory, the one who put up the capital investment or those who give their sweat and blood to keep it running?
In the adaptation, the Chalk Circle becomes a metaphor for the unending cycle of corruption, treachery, dirty power politics, the mockery of justice, the collapse of the moral and political fabric and the dismantling of the mighty state apparatus.
The Chakkar spirals into a vicious circle, in which corrupt and selfish rulers provoke popular anger and violent rebellion, bringing into power another set of rulers, who make the same blunders and suffer the same fate and so on and so forth. Like the child in the Chalk Circle, our nation is in danger of being torn apart by the opposing forces