MOTHER COURAGE
The playwright Bertolt Brech
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The playwright Bertolt Brecht described the title character of his play "Mother Courage" as "a negative, villainous character," yet she emerges for most audiences as a heroine, one who is forced into profiteering and cowardice by war. It is true that Mother Courage is an itinerant merchant who lives off the troops of both sides during the Thirty Years' War. She lives by her wits to make sure that her family remains intact. Her wagon of goods is a symbol of her family's survival, as well as the literal means by which they exist. It is the THESIS of this paper that Mother Courage fits both Brecht's description and her role as a heroine: she is a realist who, because she lives off war, is partially responsible for the death of her family. Through Mother Courage, Brecht is able to make a very serious comment about man's struggle to survive in the modern world. In Eric Bentley's collection of essays on Brecht, there is the observation that Mother Courage is indeed essentially courageous. "Tennessee Williams has written of the final moment of Brecht's play as one of the inspiring moments in all theater-- inspiring because of the woman's indomitability. On she marches with her wagon after all that has happened, a symbol of the way humanity itself goes on its way after all that has happened" (Bentley 157). This is an especially true statement because, in the course of the play, Mother Courage loves her entire family, and each member is a victim of his own heroic action.
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d her dual nature. On one hand he saw her as "villainous," profitting from the war, just as the Scandinavian countries wanted to do. On the other hand, she was a courageous woman who was realistically trying to adapt to conditions beyond her control. Toward the end of the play Brecht presents "The Song of the Wise and Good." In it are the following lyrics:
"For the virtues are dangerous in this world, you're better off without, you have a nice life... We're told to be unselfish and share what we have, but what if we have nothing? Unselfishness is a very rare virtue, it simply doesn't pay" (Brecht 320).
Many people would call this philosophy "villainous," and Brecht tries to present it without judgment. His is a modern sensibility, as he knows that the world is rarely black and white, good and evil. This is why Mother Courage is an interesting character, because she has a way of justifying her selfishness. This is not a fatalistic viewpoint from Brecht. It is his realism speaking out, when he knew that there were factors in the world that were impossible for a single person to combat. (He was, after all, living in exile, due to the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
Ronald Gray saw how Mother Courage's duality was symboli
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Approximate Word count = 2391
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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