Mother Courage Post - Lack of Empathy

What strikes me as the most odd about this play, is its use of time. At the beginning of each scene, it seems like the time of the play has drastically shifted. Instead of a play moving to the next day or to an event that was hinted at in the previous scene, the scenes skip a few days or even a few years. I think the author makes this choice because he wants the reader to think about the main plot of the story and how it affects many different contexts. What I also thought was interesting was no matter how the time changed, the characters in the play, Courage especially, are always very invested in material possessions. Courage has her canteen, and at one point leaves Kattrin alone to get killed so that she can go into town to shop because prices are cheap at the time. I think that the author ultimately wanted to show the effects of materiality and greed through the play; he wanted to show that regardless of time, materiality would always control the soul. The obsession over materiality becomes apparent during Courage’s reaction to Kattrin dying. Once she has accepted the death, she pays for Kattarin and states that she must get back to business.

As a reader, I feel like this play defies our expectations because we expect the characters to care more about their families and to learn from their mistakes. In Oedipus, Oedipus finds out the truth about his family and is angry and devastated. In Medea, Jason finds out that Medea killed their children and he becomes taken over with sadness and anger. Courage, however, does not have the same reaction. Courage seems to be a little upset, but as a whole, she seems to believe that she has more important things to attend to than the loss of her child. There also seems to be a lack of regret about leaving Kattarin alone without anyone to defend her. Audiences usually expect a higher level of empathy from characters, especially maternal figures, and Courage does not give us that. The lack of empathy that we see could have been done by Brecht as a reflection of the world that Courage and her children are living in. This play is not meant to be a tragedy like Oedipus and Medea, but is meant to be a somber lesson that life is not always happy and is full of tough choices. In Mother Courage and All Her Children, the reader is meant to see that when times are rough, some things may get sacrificed, and empathy and seems to be what Mother Courage loses.