An Unlikely Heroine

Marta Case    

An Unlikely Heroine

            While reading a play, one expects to follow the protagonist on whatever journey he or she will take. This protagonist will teach the reader something valuable about life and in the process reveal his or her true motives for acting a certain way. Normally the protagonist will serve as the character that the audience will feel sympathy for. The audience might even find themselves relating to and admiring certain innate qualities of the protagonist. Bertolt Brecht chooses to completely destroy this mold that has been created about the main character of plays in his work Mother Courage and Her Children. Instead of creating a character for the audience to respect and praise, Brecht molds his protagonist, Mother Courage, into a woman whose motives seem to confuse everyone, including the audience.  

Mother Courage becomes a parasite to war because though she claims to hate is, she relies on it to support herself and also her three children. Due to Courage’s desire for wealth, she ends up caring more about that than of her children. One might begin to think about the idea of a mother’s undying love and how normally a mother would do anything for the good of her children. Sadly, that concept fails to flourish in this play. Instead, Courage remains a prisoner to her lust for money, which eventually leads to the demise of her children and her inability to truly feel sorrow for their deaths. As each child dies, Courage refuses to change her actions. One might think that Courage would realize that something needed to change after the death of her first child. Unfortunately for the other two children, Courage continues to act the same as she had before. There is no doubt that Courage does love her children; but she does not fight for them with everything inside her, as most mothers would.

Brecht chooses to create his protagonist this way in order to send a message to the audience. He wanted to prove that simply having children does not make a woman a mother. Instead, a woman’s devotion to her children above all else and her willingness to perform an array of tasks in order to help them, make a mother. From the moment Courage was faced with one of her child’s death, it was clear that she did not react in the same way one might think a mother should. Courage did become sad over the death of her child, but she was not devastated and torn apart over the fact. This action automatically turns many readers off to Courage. How could a reader possibly respect and honor a protagonist who does not seem to value her own children as much as she should? 

I understand that Brecht was trying to make a point by creating this unlikely protagonist, but I refuse to sympathize with someone who seemed less affected by her children’s deaths than she should have been. What holds me back from feeling compassion for Courage is my own fear, which is justified. As I dig deeper into the play, I become afraid that if this woman were my mother, she would feel the same about my death that she did about her own children’s deaths. It hurts to think that my mother would not be devastated over losing me, especially at a young age. Brecht achieved his goal of presenting a controversial idea of a role so many people know and love. The role of a mother should not be taken lightly, because each mother has more influence and power in the lives of her children than she might realize.