In The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht some of the characters who commit bad deeds do get punished but not all. While Brecht is a strongly moral playwright, who writes as a Marxist, trying to satirize or undermine bourgeois values, he is not a simplistic moralist who believes that all bad deeds by individuals are in some way punished by the operation of some form of karma or divine ordinance. While Brecht does believe that a socialist state will remedy many of the injustices of capitalism, this belief is mainly a sweeping sense of human history rather than a belief in individual Providence.

In the conflict between Grushe and Natella Abashwili, Grusha, the peasant girl devoted to the baby Michael, does end up awarded the child by Azdak. Grushe, however, is not portrayed as an ideal "good" character, but a mixed one.  Azdak is a typically subversive trickster figure, who manages to do go, but also one who succeeds in using his quick tongue and nimble wits to talk himself out of trouble.