Discussion-3: Investigate the themes of the drama, Mother Courage and Her Children.
Mother Courage, the play's antiheroic protagonist, represents the capitalist machine of war. At the opening of the play, Mother Courage seeks to protect her children from the violence of war, but it becomes clear, again and again, that she actually values making money as much as, or perhaps more than, she values her children's lives. She is haggling over prices when an army recruiter takes Eilif away, buying supplies when both he and Kattrin are executed, and is too much of a businesswoman to pay the full ransom for Swiss Cheese's life. Although she knows her children's lives are in danger because of the war, Mother Courage hopes it continues long enough for her to make her fortune—which she doesn't and won't. At the end of the play, with her children dead, Mother Courage continues with business as usual. The war and her children's deaths do not change her life or her way of thinking, but they do validate the cynicism about people and the virtues in human nature she has expressed throughout the play. As a representative of capitalist war profiteering, Mother Courage's main focus is, obviously, on making money. Lives, principles, and human emotions are far less important and do not interfere with her unwavering commitment to profit.
Kattrin
Kattrin represents resilience to wartime violence. Although she spends most of the play as a silent victim of war, she finds a voice of sorts at the end of the play and is the only character that shows real courage. Mother Courage suggests that Kattrin was gagged and raped and lost her voice because of the trauma. Kattrin loves children and wants only to marry and have her own family. However, her prospects of marriage are dim because of her inability to speak, a scar she finds disfiguring, and diminishing numbers of eligible men. Indeed, Kattrin's life seems to be one huge casualty of war. Yet she doesn't give in or try to turn it around for her benefit as her mother does. On the contrary, she risks her life—and loses it—by climbing on a roof and beating a drum to call the sentry's attention to the invading troops. Refusing to stop, she is shot dead. Yet despite her sacrifice, the war goes on, and her mother continues her business. However, a village of children is saved—for the present.
Chaplain
The chaplain represents for Bertolt Brecht the worthlessness of religion and religious hypocrisy, particularly during war. At the opening of the play, the chaplain arrives as a spiritual leader to soldiers in battle. As soon as the situation becomes precarious for him, however, the chaplain abandons his religion and dresses as a Catholic priest to avoid execution. He remains in priest's clothing until the Protestant army once again gains control. During peacetime, the chaplain assumes he will be able to return to his church, despite having abandoned his faith and those who needed him during difficult times. Obviously he lacks real faith.
Cook
The cook provides some comic relief in an otherwise disturbing political satire. An aging would-be lover, the cook, referred to as "Mr. Lamb," has considerable charm, having seduced many women, including Yvette who sings of him as the love of her life who abandoned her when she was 16. He partners with Mother Courage after losing his job during the Catholic incursion. When he inherits a small inn, he offers Mother Courage a quiet life running it with him, but he will not have Kattrin accompany them. The cook sees things for what they are, often calling out the chaplain for his hypocrisy and agreeing with Mother Courage the war is nothing more than a racket. Like her, the cook hopes to take what he can from it for as long as it lasts.
Eilif
Eilif represents both the virtues of good soldiers and the chaplain's belief war brings out the worst in everyone. Eilif makes a name for himself by killing villagers and stealing their livestock to feed his starving regiment. Mother Courage cynically notes his commanders wouldn't need brave soldiers to commit courageous acts if they stopped putting the men and boys in danger or knew how to manage their regiments. When Eilif performs a similar act during peacetime, he is executed. Eilif's punishment asks audiences to question why a violent act can be considered courageous in one circumstance and criminal in the next, another of war's absurdities.
Swiss Cheese
Swiss Cheese is Mother Courage's youngest son. During the war, he becomes paymaster for the Finnish regiment and takes his role seriously. He tries to return the regiment's cash box to his commanding officer but is discovered by enemy forces and executed. Mother Courage has the opportunity to buy Swiss Cheese's freedom from the executioner, but she takes too long deliberating, questioning whether she would rather spend her money saving her son or saving her cart. Mother Courage's haggling over the price of Swiss Cheese's life, the same way she haggles over the price of the armorer's ammunition at the opening of the scene, highlights her value of money over humanity.
Mother Courage and Her Children (German: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder) is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin.[1] Four theatrical productions were produced in Switzerland and Germany from 1941 to 1952, the last three supervised and/or directed by Brecht, who had returned to East Germany from the United States.
Several years after Brecht's death in 1956, the play was adapted as a German film, Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1961), starring Helene Weigel, Brecht's widow and a leading actress.
Mother Courage is considered by some to be the greatest play of the 20th century, and perhaps also the greatest anti-war play of all time.[2] Critic Brett D. Johnson points out, "Although numerous theatrical artists and scholars may share artistic director Oskar Eustis's opinion that Brecht's masterpiece is the greatest play of the twentieth century, productions of Mother Courage remain a rarity in contemporary American theatre."[3]
The play is set in the 17th century in Europe during the Thirty Years' War. The Recruiting Officer and Sergeant are introduced, both complaining about the difficulty of recruiting soldiers to the war. Anna Fierling (Mother Courage) enters pulling a cart containing provisions for sale to soldiers, and introduces her children Eilif, Kattrin, and Schweizerkas ("Swiss Cheese"). The sergeant negotiates a deal with Mother Courage while Eilif is conscripted by the Recruiting Officer.
Two years thereafter, Mother Courage argues with a Protestant General's cook over a capon, and Eilif is congratulated by the General for killing peasants and slaughtering their cattle. Eilif and his mother sing "The Fishwife and the Soldier". Mother Courage scolds her son for endangering himself.
Three years later, Swiss Cheese works as an army paymaster. The camp prostitute, Yvette Pottier, sings "The Fraternization Song". Mother Courage uses this song to warn Kattrin against involving herself with soldiers. Before the Catholic troops arrive, the Cook and Chaplain bring a message from Eilif. Swiss Cheese hides the regiment's paybox from invading soldiers, and Mother Courage and companions change their insignia from Protestant to Catholic. Swiss Cheese is captured and tortured by the Catholics having hidden the paybox by the river. Mother Courage attempts bribery to free him, planning to pawn the wagon first and redeem it with the regiment money. When Swiss Cheese claims that he has thrown the box in the river, Mother Courage backtracks on the price, and Swiss Cheese is killed. Fearing to be shot as an accomplice, Mother Courage does not acknowledge his body, and it is discarded.
Later, Mother Courage waits outside the General's tent to register a complaint and sings the "Song of Great Capitulation" to a young soldier anxious to complain of inadequate pay. The song persuades both to withdraw their complaints.
When Catholic General Tilly's funeral approaches, the Chaplain tells Mother Courage that the war will still continue, and she is persuaded to pile up stocks. The Chaplain then suggests to Mother Courage that she marry him, but she rejects his proposal. Mother Courage curses the war because she finds Kattrin disfigured after being raped by a drunken soldier. Thereafter Mother Courage is again following the Protestant army.
Two peasants try to sell merchandise to her when they hear news of peace with the death of the Swedish king. The Cook appears and causes an argument between Mother Courage and the Chaplain. Mother Courage is off to the market while Eilif enters, dragged in by soldiers. Eilif is executed for killing a peasant while stealing livestock, trying to repeat the same act for which he was praised as hero in wartime, but Mother Courage never hears thereof. When she finds out the war continues, the Cook and Mother Courage move on with the wagon.
In the seventeenth year of the war, there is no food and no supplies. The Cook inherits an inn in Utrecht and suggests to Mother Courage that she operate it with him - but he refuses to harbour Kattrin because he fears that her disfigurement will repel potential customers. Thereafter Mother Courage and Kattrin pull the wagon by themselves.
When Mother Courage is trading in the Protestant city of Halle, Kattrin is left with a peasant family in the countryside overnight. As Catholic soldiers force the peasants to guide the army to the city for a sneak attack, Kattrin fetches a drum from the cart and beats it, waking the townspeople, but is herself shot. Early in the morning, Mother Courage sings a lullaby to her daughter's corpse, has the peasants bury it, and hitches herself to the cart.
Mother Courage is one of nine plays that Brecht wrote in resistance to the rise of Fascism and Nazism. In response to the invasion of Poland by the German armies of Adolf Hitler in 1939, Brecht wrote Mother Courage in what writers call a "white heat"—in a little over a month.[4] As the preface to the Ralph Manheim/John Willett Collected Plays puts it:
Mother Courage, with its theme of the devastating effects of a European war and the blindness of anyone hoping to profit by it, is said to have been written in a month; judging by the almost complete absence of drafts or any other evidence of preliminary studies, it must have been an exceptionally direct piece of inspiration.[5]
Following Brecht's own principles for political drama, the play is not set in modern times but during the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648, which involved all the European states. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling, nicknamed Mother Courage, a wily canteen woman with the Swedish Army, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play, she loses all three of her children, Schweizerkas, Eilif, and Kattrin, to the very war from which she tried to profit.
The name of the central character, Mother Courage, is drawn from the picaresque writings of the 17th-century German writer Grimmelshausen. His central character in the early short novel, The Runagate Courage,[6] also struggles and connives her way through the Thirty Years' War in Germany and Poland. Otherwise the story is mostly Brecht's, in collaboration with Steffin.
The action of the play takes place over the course of 12 years (1624 to 1636), represented in 12 scenes. Some give a sense of Courage's career, but do not provide time for viewers to develop sentimental feelings and empathize with any of the characters. Meanwhile, Mother Courage is not depicted as a noble character. The Brechtian epic theatre distinguished itself from the ancient Greek tragedies, in which the heroes are far above the average. Neither does Brecht's ending of his play inspire any desire to imitate the main character, Mother Courage.
Mother Courage is among Brecht's most famous plays. Some directors consider it to be the greatest play of the 20th century.[7] Brecht expresses the dreadfulness of war and the idea that virtues are not rewarded in corrupt times. He used an epic structure to force the audience to focus on the issues rather than getting involved with the characters and their emotions. Epic plays are a distinct genre typical of Brecht. Some critics believe that he created the form.[8]
Mother Courage is an example of Brecht's concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt, or "V" effect; preferably "alienation" or "estrangement effect" Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene, juxtaposition, actors changing characters and costume on stage, the use of narration, simple props and scenery. For instance, a single tree would be used to convey a whole forest, and the stage is usually flooded with bright white light, whether it's a winter's night or a summer's day. Several songs, interspersed throughout the play, are used to underscore the themes of the play. They also require the audience to think about what the playwright is saying.
Roles
- Mother Courage (also known as "Canteen Anna")
- Kattrin (Catherine), her mute daughter
- Eilif, her older son
- Schweizerkas ("Swiss Cheese", also mentioned as Feyos), her younger son
- Recruiting Officer
- Sergeant
- Cook
- Swedish Commander
- Chaplain
- Ordinance Officer
- Yvette Pottier
- Man with the Bandage
- Another Sergeant
- Old Colonel
- Clerk
- Young Soldier
- Older Soldier
- Peasant
- Peasant Woman
- Young Man
- Old Woman
- Another Peasant
- Another Peasant Woman
- Young Peasant
- Lieutenant
- Voice
First produced in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1939, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children is considered by many to be among the playwright’s best work and one of the most powerful anti-war dramas in history. The play is based on two works by Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen: his 1669 novel, Simplicissimus and his 1670 play, Courage: An Adventuress. Many critics believe Mother Courage to be the masterwork of Brecht’s concept of Epic Theater. This dramatic subgenre, pioneered by Brecht sought to present theatre that could be viewed with complete detachment. Through such techniques as short, self-contained scenes that prevent cathartic climax, songs and card slogans that interrupts and explains forthcoming action, and detached acting that wards off audience identification—techniques that came to be known as “alienation effects”—the playwright sought to present a cerebral theatrical experience unmarred by emotional judgement. Brecht wanted audiences to think critically and objectively about the play’s message, to assess the effects of war on an empirical level.
Much to Brecht’s chagrin, however, audiences identified with the play on a deeply emotional level, drawing immediate parallels between the Thirty Years’ War that the characters face and the horrors of World War II. Mother Courage was written in 1938-39, just as World War II was breaking out in Europe. Brecht completed the play while living in exile, having fled his native country in the face of a rising fascist government. It would not be until 1949 that Mother Courage would debut in Brecht’s homeland, with a production in East Berlin, East Germany. Brecht set the play during the monumental Thirty Years’ War, which occurred three centuries earlier, instead of the contemporary conflict. Brecht hoped that, because the events depicted were removed in time, audiences would be more objective when they viewed the play. But many of the European viewers and critics had first-hand experience with the horrors of war. They easily found personal meaning in the play’s setting and story. Brecht rewrote the play for the 1949 East German production, hoping to minimize an emotional response from the audience, but Mother Courage still proved a powerful experience. In the decades since its debut, the play has grown to be regarded as one of the twentieth century’s landmark dramas and a potent condemnation of war.
Brecht was born Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht on February 10, 1898, in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. He was the son of a Catholic father, Friedrich Brecht, who worked as a salesman for a paper factory, and a Protestant mother, Sofie. Brecht grew up in a middle-class household and was precociously intelligent in school. He began writing poems while still in secondary school and had several published by 1914. By the time Brecht graduated, he was also interested in the theatre. Instead of continuing on this path, however, he studied science and medicine at university to avoid the draft. It did not work, and he was drafted in 1918 at the end of World War I. He served as an orderly in the military hospital in Augsburg.
Both his upbringing and his experience in the military profoundly affected Brecht and his writing. He rejected the bourgeois values of his youth and also developed a keen understanding of religion, largely informed by the conflicting influences of his parents’ respective faiths. The wartime horrors that Brecht experienced firsthand in the military hospital led to his life-long pacifist views. He expressed these beliefs in his depiction of the horrific Thirty Years’ War in his 1949 play Mother Courage and Her Children.
Brecht began writing plays as early as 1922, with the production of his first work Baal. Concurrent with his artistic work, his anti-war beliefs led him to sympathize with communist politics; he
began a long affiliation with communist organizations in 1919, following the end of World War I. After finally abandoning his sporadic university studies, Brecht became the dramaturg (“drama specialist” or writer in residence) at a theater in Munich and began writing full time by 1920.
Over the next thirteen years, Brecht published several short stories and poems and successfully staged many of his own plays. He collaborated with composer Kurt Weill on several musical plays, including one of his best known works, 1929’s The Threepenny Opera. By 1930, Brecht’s plays had become highly political, espousing his belief that communism would solve many of the world’s social inequalities and political problems. When the National Socialist Party (the Nazis) came to power in Germany in the early 1930s, Brecht and his works were essentially banned. He and his family fled the increasingly hostile environment in 1933; the playwright essentially went into exile for the next fifteen years.
Brecht continued to write in exile, hopping between European countries and the United States. In addition to a novelization of The Threepenny Opera, he produced numerous plays that were specifically critical of the Nazi regime and, in general, the world’s political situation. Of these plays, the anti-war Mother Courage and Her Children became one of his best-known and critically acclaimed works.
The end of World War II found the defeated Germany divided into East and West factions. With the animosity of the Nazi party dispelled, Brecht was invited home. He decided to settle in the communist controlled East Germany, in part because they offered him a theatre and funding. Brecht formed the Berliner Ensemble, which debuted in 1949. That same year Brecht wrote his last original play, The Days of the Commune (though the work would not see production until 1957), as he devoted all his time to running the theater and working as its stage manager. He continued to write poetry and adapt other playwright’s work for his theater, however. By the mid-1950s, the importance of Brecht’s plays had been realized and they became popularly recognized. Brecht died on August 14, 1956, in East Berlin, from a coronary thrombosis.
Mother Courage is the woman around whom the play is constructed. She is middle-aged and has three children by three different men: two sons named Eilif and Swiss Cheese and a daughter named Kattrin. Mother Courage runs a mobile canteen which sells food and goods. She is a cutthroat businesswoman and follows the war, and the commerce it provides, wherever it goes. Formerly known as Anna Fierling, Mother Courage got her name from an incident in Riga in which she drove her canteen through a bombardment to sell her bread and came out alive.
Throughout the play, Mother Courage continually demonstrates that the preservation of her business is the most important thing in her life. She tries to avoid having her sons recruited for the war, not because she fears for their safety but because their help is needed pushing the wagon. When she fails to do so and Swiss Cheese is captured and sentenced to death, she haggles over the price of his ransom until it is too late. Still, she has a soft spot for her daughter, Kattrin, who is simple-minded and cannot speak. Mother Courage refuses the Cook’s offer to run an inn with him because he will not allow Kattrin to accompany them. By the end of the play, all three children have died, and Mother Courage pulls the canteen alone.
Sourtces:
· https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Mother-Courage-and-Her-Children/character-analysis/
· https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Courage_and_Her_Children
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