Bertolt Brecht Essay, Research Paper

In 1939, on the Eve of the Nazi Holocaust, the great German dramatist Bertolt Brecht wrote Mother Courage and Her Children. For the scene of his drama, he chose the Thirty Years & # 8217 ; War, the senseless seventeenth century European struggle that pitted Protestants against Catholics and laid waste to whole lands and peoples. Crossing the old ages 1618-1648, it was the most destructive war in European history until modern times. It was a war which apparently no 1 wanted but which no 1 could halt once it had gained its barbarous impulse. The drama came excessively late to be of effect in World War Two, but it has played to great consequence on the universe phase of all time since, going Brecht & # 8217 ; s most popular work after The Threepenny Opera. Mother Courage herself has become a theatre original of the never-say-die, uncontrollable human spirit. For all its heroic poem range & # 8211 ; turn overing through Sweden, Poland, Saxony, Bavaria and Alsace & # 8211 ; the drama is an intensely personal journey. It centers on a adult female, Mother Courage, who owns a turn overing canteen waggon and tungsten

ho follows the war selling victuals and sundries to its troops. She is an earthy peasant, a hearty cynic who profits from slaughter, and who actually fears that peace may break out. Mother Courage knows no loyalty but to her business and to her family whom she tries to protect from the ravages of the carnage. Eventually, the war exacts its pound of flesh, its payment for her long feeding upon it. One by one, all her children become fodder for the ravenous maw of the conflict, victims of the very virtues which she has instilled in them for survival. This is a deeply human play. Mother Courage embodies the best, and worst, of all of us in similar circumstances. With a single mindedness that produces real heroism, she negotiates the wake of the war. Ruthless, fiercely selfish, clever and conniving in defense of her small moveable turf, she is completely understandable. In her bawdy humor, tenderness and rue, she is utterly human and sympathetic. In the end, like in any tragedy, it is her great will and indomitable spirit which is both her ruin and her triumph.