Blog Post 5

Toby Egbuna

Blog Post 5- Mother Courage and her Children

            In Mother Courage and Her Children, author Bertolt Brecht portrays a working mother and her three children working to make due during a time of war. Both the Polish-Swedish War and the Thirty Years War are taking place during the play. The play occurs between 1624 and 1636, during which time the audience sees different characters of the play transform for the worse. Brecht uses the elongated timeline in Mother Courage and her Children to display the corruptive effects of war.

            The author’s goal in using this unorthodox play style was to show the negative, long-term effects of war. Being a Marxist, Brecht was against war. Developing the play to take its course over twelve years was effective because it allowed the audience to develop complete opinions on the characters. If, for example, the work had taken occurred over the course of a few days, as is typical with plays, it would be difficult for the audience to develop these same thorough analyses of the characters. Also, the reader would be likely to blame the characters’ trait changes to single events, rather than realizing that the long-term war slowly corrupted the characters.

            The reaction to the play as a reader is one of disgust and shock, but not for the same reasons that would normally stem from a play about war. Seeing Mother Courage’s perversion is extremely surprising to the audience, especially when one considers the way in which the two characters were introduced to the reader. Mother Courage is presented as a loving and caring mother, as she speaks up for her son when the Recruiting Officer and Sergeant try to recruit him…

Scene 1

Swiss Cheese: This is Mother Courage!

Sergeant: Never heard of her.

Mother Courage: Honesty written all over it.

Sergeant: Courage? What kind of name is that?

Mother Courage: I was once so scared of going bust I drove my cart right through the bombardment of Riga — right through the heart of it — with fifty loaves of bread in the back. That's why they call me Courage. Mind you, the bread was going mouldy, I didn't have much choice.

Recruiting Officer: Sergeant, I think she's winding you up.

Mother Courage: Wind him up? In front of my innocent children?

Although her sarcasm is rather easy to pick up on in this passage, it is still clear that Mother Courage is wise enough to realize what the military men are trying to do and is willing to fight to protect her son. She portrays herself as innocent, which is almost completely opposite of the image the reader has of her by the end of the play…

Scene 7

Mother Courage: I'm not having anyone put me off this war. They keep saying, war destroys the weak. I don't notice the weak doing so brilliantly during the peace. It's war that feeds its own!

Nobody try and tell me this is different

War's a business and it's just like all the rest

All right, we have to deal in guns and bullets

But it's still about survival of the best.

And what good is ducking out anyway? The ones who duck out are the first ones to get killed…

The war goes on. The war is raging.

The men are here. They must be fed

And what remains must now start trading

That's us. Let's go. It's going well.

Mother Courage’s speech about the war in this passage is appalling to the reader. Most people view war as a barbaric and harmful to everyone it effects, but Courage supports it because it supposedly helps people survive economically. In reality, she is just saying this to cover up her on selfish desires. She needs the war because, as The Chaplain explains later in the play, “money’s the only thing [Mother Courage] loves” (Scene 8). Comparing this image of Mother Courage to the one developed from the onset of the play, the audience is shocked because she has transformed from a compassionate mother, to a greedy, self-serving woman.            

            Numerous instances of characters saying that the war is a necessity because it helps people survive economically and socially is contradictory to Brecht’s message regarding war. Readers could potentially see this message as a reason to support the war, rather than a cop-out for those who selfishly support the war. Fortunately, Brecht is able to counter this possibility through the pattern of the songs from different characters. Each of these songs is used to directly support Brecht’s claims. For example, the Soldier’s song in Scene 6 talks about the short lifespan of a soldier, and how they are forced to die almost at the whim of their overseer. His contradictory message does stand out, but Brecht has enough direct support for his argument to drown it out. Overall, Brecht successfully uses his unconventional, elongated play style to convey his message that war corrupts people.