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    The Mother Courage and Her Children: An Antiwar Play

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    Titikshya Rath
    Berthold Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children is an anti-war work that depicts the devastation of the Thirty Years' War in Europe through the story of Mother Courage and her three children. As the war rages for decades, each of Mother Courage's children meet tragic fates: her son Eilif is executed, her son Swiss Cheese is killed for his honesty, and her mute daughter Kattrin is burned alive while warning villagers of an attack. Though Mother Courage attempts to profit from the war and keep her family safe, she ultimately fails to protect any of her children from the brutality and destruction of prolonged conflict. Brecht uses the play to convey a powerful anti-

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    The Mother Courage and Her Children: An Antiwar Play

    Uploaded by

    Titikshya Rath
    703 views2 pages
    Berthold Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children is an anti-war work that depicts the devastation of the Thirty Years' War in Europe through the story of Mother Courage and her three children. As the war rages for decades, each of Mother Courage's children meet tragic fates: her son Eilif is executed, her son Swiss Cheese is killed for his honesty, and her mute daughter Kattrin is burned alive while warning villagers of an attack. Though Mother Courage attempts to profit from the war and keep her family safe, she ultimately fails to protect any of her children from the brutality and destruction of prolonged conflict. Brecht uses the play to convey a powerful anti-

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    Berthold Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children is an anti-war work that depicts the devastation of the Thirty Years' War in Europe through the story of Mother Courage and her three children. As the war rages for decades, each of Mother Courage's children meet tragic fates: her son Eilif is executed, her son Swiss Cheese is killed for his honesty, and her mute daughter Kattrin is burned alive while warning villagers of an attack. Though Mother Courage attempts to profit from the war and keep her family safe, she ultimately fails to protect any of her children from the brutality and destruction of prolonged conflict. Brecht uses the play to convey a powerful anti-

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    703 views2 pages

    The Mother Courage and Her Children: An Antiwar Play

    Uploaded by

    Titikshya Rath
    Berthold Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children is an anti-war work that depicts the devastation of the Thirty Years' War in Europe through the story of Mother Courage and her three children. As the war rages for decades, each of Mother Courage's children meet tragic fates: her son Eilif is executed, her son Swiss Cheese is killed for his honesty, and her mute daughter Kattrin is burned alive while warning villagers of an attack. Though Mother Courage attempts to profit from the war and keep her family safe, she ultimately fails to protect any of her children from the brutality and destruction of prolonged conflict. Brecht uses the play to convey a powerful anti-

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    The Mother Courage and Her Children: an antiwar play

    Bercht’s Mother Courage and Her Children is based on the thirty-year war (1618-1648) between Sweden
    and Poland. The war was between the Protestants and Catholics. The war spread to many of the
    European countries and ruined people’s lives ruthlessly. Especially Germans suffered a lot. It depicts
    how a war ruins innocent people’s lives and how people suffer from poverty, cruelty and power. The
    play is called an anti-war play because it wants to convey a message that war is inhumane.

    The plot of Mother Courage centres round Anna Fierling who is known as Mother Courage. She is a
    middle-aged woman who runs a canteen on a Wagon. She earns her livelihood by selling food items
    such as drinks, cigarettes, bread, belts to the soldiers in the Protestant’s camp. She has three children;
    two sons: Eilif and Swiss Cheese and one daughter, Kattrin. She intends to preserve her family and
    bring them through war. The war has brought nothing but death and destruction to Mother Courage
    and her family.

    As the play opens, the long drawn out war is making a fresh start. A Sergeant and a Recruiting Officer are
    on the lookout for fresh recruits. The action is divided into three sections. At the end of each section,
    one of mother courage's children becomes the victim of war. Although she earns her livelihood from
    the war and wants a peaceful life, she is unable to live peacefully and protect her children. She herself
    wants the war to continue but she does not want to involve herself in the war actively. Hence, the
    Chaplain calls her ‘a hyena of the battlefield’ because she wants to exploit the most from the war.

    Mother courage arrives with her dumb daughter Katrin in the canteen wagon, drawn by her two sons,
    Eilif and Swiss Cheese to join the new war. She carries on with her business enterprise without fear for
    war. When she confronts the professionals of war, a Sergeant and the Recruiting Officer, she hopes to
    protect her family and prevent her sons from being recruited. Despite her cleverness, she is overcome
    by the men of war. The Recruiting Officer carries away Eilif. But she cannot give up her business. She
    thinks that she can make more money through business if war lasts for some more time.

    All the important characters in the play are victims of the war. Eilif dies for his brave deeds in the field.
    Swiss Cheese dies for his honesty. Kattrin dies for her kindness. Yvette becomes a prostitute because she
    is unable to find out her lover and find a job for her livelihood. Mother Courage is the only survivor. She
    continues to exist because of her business instincts.

    Eilif, the elder son of Mother Courage, is persuaded by the recruiting officer and joins the army ignoring
    his mother’s advice. He gets appreciation from his camp officer for his brave deeds. He bravely breaks
    into a peasant’s farm and steels cattle to provide food to the soldiers. When peace is announced, he
    is arrested by the Catholic soldiers and is executed for breaking into the farm. Mother courage does not
    know about her son’s death till end of the play.

    Mother Courage’s younger son Swiss Cheese joins the army as a paymaster. His job is to give salary and
    maintain the accounts. Once, when the catholic army attacks the Protestant camp, the soldiers run
    away. Swiss Cheese takes the cash box and hides himself and the cash box in his mother’s canteen. As
    the Catholic soldiers capture him and enquire about the cash box, he keeps quiet. He is killed by the
    soldiers for his honesty.

    Kattrin, Mother Courage’s dumb daughter, is killed for her kindness. When the Catholic soldiers
    approach the town to plunder the townspeople, Kattrin climbs up to the top of her roof and starts
    beating a drum to warn the people. The soldiers become furious and set fire to the house. Kattrin is
    burnt alive. Kattrin's heroic sacrifice is the symbol of innocent people suffering at the hands of war
    lords. In the end, Mother Courage is seen in the archetypal image of the mother, bending over the dead
    body of her daughter and singing a lullaby to her child. She refuses to accept the fact that she has lost
    her daughter.

    Thus, Brecht's aim was to show the horrors of war which inhumanly destroys the innocent people. His
    anti-war sentiments are evident as he points out that during war, peace is discouraged as wasteful
    disorder and war is eulogized for its discipline and organization. But the military organization in the
    long run can produce only civilian dislocation. Thus he discourages war in his play.

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