Blog Post 5: Mother Courage

Emma Dollhopf

Blog Post 5: Mother Courage

            Many writers from late nineteenth century and on began to change the audience’s expected assumptions of drama and the traditional aspects of a play. Brecht indeed does this in his play, Mother Courage and Her Children. Dismantling ideas of what a reader would expect, Brecht separates the reader from the characters, incorporates songs in a random matter, and blatantly personifies each character as a virtue that survivors of war must not possess.

            Plays are usually expected to have a smooth transitioning of scenes with rarely little time lapsing between each scene/act and with a steady rise in plot leading to a climax and followed by a resolution. While there is a steady plot there is not a very defining climax and a rather dissatisfying resolution. Each scene is a random snippet of a day in the characters life, allowing the reader to only gauge the character’s traits based on their actions Brecht chose to show. Furthermore, each scene has minor characters thrown in with no thorough explanation. This causes the reader to be separated from the characters and makes it difficult for the reader to relate to or sympathize with the any character. As opposed to being a true morality play, Brecht allowed for this separation from character and reader so the reader would stray away from a critical reflection of their own person.

            Another technique Brecht used to defy what a play should be is by strategically placing a songs within the dialogue. Instead the songs integrating in the play and feeling like a musical theatrical production, the songs act randomly and independently from the action of the play. Many of the songs teach ideas, presumably Brecht believed, about the negativities of war. For instance, The Song of the Girl and the Soldier in scene three teaches a person to not draft war as “you’ll go out like a light (scene 2, line 197).” Yvette’s Fraternization Song teaches Kattrin about loving a man in war and how he will always go “marching out of sight (scene 3, line 101).” Lastly, the play begins and ends Courage singing, “whatever life has not died out, it staggers to its feet again (scene 1, line 49-50 and scene 12, line 53-54)” which teaches the cyclical, crude lifestyle of battle and war. This allows Brecht to discreetly express his ideas about war.

            Brecht personifies the main characters to represent a virtue. Mother represents courage, Kattrin kindness, Swiss Cheese honesty, and Elif wisdom. All her children die throughout the play signifying the idea that virtues typically seen as morally good, are bad and with these characteristics one will die in war. Mother Courage is the only one to survive signifying that courage is the only trait you need to survive battle. This expresses Brecht’s belief that war either changes one to have a bad character, or only ones with bad characters can survive the horrific battles of war.

            Brecht’s techniques were successful in getting his ideas across without causing a nasty debate or being brutally boring as a true morality play would be. His play has deep meaning but is more entertaining and thus, easier to accept his negative thoughts on war.