Brecht's Argument About War
Within the play, Mother Courage and her Children, written by
Bertolt Brecht, there tells a story about a woman’s life that feeds off the
war. Brecht focuses on Mother Courage, the protagonist of that play
that does not learn anything. He uses her character’s actions to de-
naturalize drama events that occur on stage. Through Mother Courage’s
actions, Brecht illustrates the horrible results in individual character due
In this scene, Mother Courage tries to save all her merchandise
in hopes of making profit,half a guilder per to be exact, but ironically the
setting is right after the battle at Magdeburg where thousands of deaths
just occurred. Mother Courage is so caught up in her own world that she
refuses to help save any of the farmers as they constantly bleed right by
her side. She would rather wait to sell her linen shirts to some soldiers or
customers in the future, then use them to wrap up severe injuries to
Mother Courage easily looks over the fact that these victims from
the town are literally about to die at any second due to great blood lost,
yet she strongly refuses to donate a single shirt for such a cause, not
unless she gets anything in return. Her understanding that these poor
farmers have nothing that they can give her solidifies her firm refusal.
Her selfish, self absorbed characteristics are the results of war which
leads Mother Courage to feel that the only way to survive is to drag her
cart after the war to sell her merchandise and make a living from it on
She feels as if there is nothing that she can possibly spare during
these harsh times, even to help a dying victim. That in itself shows her
great lack of compassion and virtue. However, luckily the Chaplain lift
her up, and forcibly takes the shirts and tears them up to bandage these
poor victims. With so much death around, she even has the nerve to
say, “I’ve only had losses from your victory,” (Brecht 60) as a response to
hearing the victorious music. This demonstrates her priorities which only
focuses on her desires for profit.
Although her daughter, Kattrin tries to threaten her mother to
help these poor people, Mother Courage could care less about her
daughter’s desires and happiness. At the end of the scene, Mother
Courage only loses four shirts, yet she cries and complains about them
while the people around her are dead from this horrendous loot of
Magdeburg where soldiers threatened, burned, and killed unarmed,
defenseless, innocent people for their possessions and for just the
Brecht uses Mother Courage’s actions to teach the audience by
giving them an image of what they should never become, and even
more, do something against. With Mother Courage’s traits, Brecht
provokes the audience to “un-make” the world he created. Brecht tries to
present a terrible world through epic theatre as pedagogical theater in
which the play will teach the audience on how to behave and hopefully
to become a collective of “thinking human beings” according to Professor
Machiavelli, Niccolò, and William J. Connell. The Prince: With Related Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005. Print.
