Mother Courage and Her Children Summary ( acknow: Gradesaver)
The play is set in Europe during the Thirty Years' War. Mother Courage, a canteen woman, pulls her cart with her three children (Eilif, Kattrin, and Swiss Cheese) in the wake of the army, trading with the soldiers and attempting to make profit from the war.
Two years later, we find Mother Courage haggling with the General's Cook over a capon. On the other side of the stage, Eilif is praised by the General for heroically slaughtering some peasants and stealing their cattle. Eilif sings "The Song of the Girl and the Soldier," and his mother joins in. She then berates him for risking his life so stupidly.
Three years later, Swiss Cheese has taken a job as the regiment's paymaster. Yvette Pottier, the camp prostitute, sings "The Song of Fraternization" to warn Kattrin about the horrors of a relationship with a soldier. The Cook and the Chaplain arrive to greet Mother Courage with a message from Eilif, and there is suddenly a Catholic attack. The Chaplain discards his robes, and Swiss Cheese hides the regiment's paybox.
Later the same evening, Swiss Cheese is followed when he attempts to return the paybox to his General but is captured. Mother Courage mortgages her cart to Yvette and tries to bargain with the soldiers using the money--but she bargains for too long, and Swiss Cheese is shot. Mother Courage denies his body when it is brought to her to be identified, so it is thrown into a pit.
The next scene finds Mother Courage waiting to complain outside the Captain's tent. She sings the "Song of the Great Capitulation" to a young soldier who also has come to complain to the Captain. The song, which has the moral "everyone gives in sooner or later," leads to the soldier's storming out, and Courage herself ends up deciding that she doesn't want to complain.
On the day of the funeral of General Tilly, Mother Courage undertakes a stock check, and she talks at length with the Chaplain about whether or not the war will continue. He convinces her that it will, so she decides to invest in more stock for her cart. The Chaplain suggests that Mother Courage could marry him, but he is rejected. Kattrin appears and returns to her mother, severely disfigured, having collected some merchandise. Mother Courage thus curses the war.
In the following brief scene, Courage sings a song that praises the war as a good provider. Business is good for now.
Two peasants wake up Mother Courage, trying to sell her some bedding, shortly before the news breaks that peace has broken out. The Cook returns, unpaid by the regiment, and he instigates an argument between Mother Courage and the Chaplain. Yvette makes her second appearance, now a rich widow, much older and fatter, and reveals that the Cook was once her lover. Mother Courage leaves for the town, and Eilif is dragged along by soldiers. Again he has slaughtered some peasants and stolen their cattle, but it is now peacetime. He is executed for it, but his mother never finds out. She returns with the news that the war is back on again, and she now returns to business with the Cook in tow.
The seventeenth year of the war finds the world in a bleak condition, with nothing to trade and nothing to eat. The Cook inherits an inn in Utrecht and invites Mother Courage to run it with him, but he refuses to take Kattrin. Mother Courage is forced to turn him down, so the two go their separate ways. Pulling the wagon by themselves, Mother Courage and Kattrin hear an anonymous voice singing about the pleasure of having plenty.
The Catholics are besieging the Protestant town of Halle, and Mother Courage is away in the town, trading. Sleeping outside a peasant family's house, Kattrin is woken by their search party, who take one of the peasants with them as a guide. The peasant couple prays for the safety of those in the town, but Kattrin, unseen, gets a drum from the cart and climbs onto the roof. She beats the drum to try to awake the townspeople so that the siege can be anticipated. The soldiers return and shoot her, but before she dies, she is successful in awakening the town.
The next morning, Mother Courage sings a lullaby over her daughter's corpse, pays the peasants to bury her, and harnesses herself, alone, to the cart. The cart rolls back into action, but it is easier to pull now, since there is so little left in it to sell.
This play might have exposed the brutality of Roman Catholics and showed the resistance of Protestant Christians during Thirty Years' War (if I understood correctly). It has a similar theme of 'anti-war' with 'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Erich Remarque, but there is a big difference between AQWF and Mother Courage, as AQWF blamed all the wars and invasions.
ReplyDeleteGood observation. Brecht chose the background of the 30 years war in order to find a contemporary parallel to the situation of the pre WW2 times---how war was a time of rampant corruption an personal gain.
DeleteThe Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was a series of wars principally fought in Central Europe, involving most of the countries of Europe. It was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, and one of the longest continuous wars in modern history.
ReplyDeleteA major consequence of the Thirty Years' War was the devastation of entire regions, denuded by the foraging armies. Famine and disease significantly decreased the population of the German states, Bohemia, the Low Countries, and Italy; most of the combatant powers were bankrupted. While the regiments within each army were not strictly mercenary, in that they were not units for hire that changed sides from battle to battle, some individual soldiers that made up the regiments were mercenaries. The problem of discipline was made more difficult by the ad hoc nature of 17th-century military financing; armies were expected to be largely self-funding, by means of loot taken or tribute extorted from the settlements where they operated. This encouraged a form of lawlessness that imposed severe hardship on inhabitants of the occupied territory.
Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, an anti-war theatre piece, is set during the Thirty Years' War. Mother Courage is one of nine plays that Brecht wrote in an attempt to counter the rise of Fascism and Nazism. In response to the invasion of Poland by the German armies of Adolf Hitler in 1939, Brecht wrote Mother Courage in what writers call a "white heat"—in a little over a month.
Following Brecht's own principles for political drama, the play is not set in modern times but during the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling, nicknamed "Mother Courage", a wily canteen woman with the Swedish Army who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play, she loses all three of her children, Swiss Cheese, Eilif, and Kattrin, to the same war from which she sought to profit.
good work Lalit---reflect on why Brecht chose this setting for his play!
DeleteThe Thirty Years' War was a series of wars in Central Europe from 1618 to 1648, involving most European nations. Being one of the longest lasting wars in modern history, it had caused a lot of mayhem across Europe, the consequences being the devastation of a major part of European nations.
ReplyDeleteFamine and disease ominously cut the inhabitants of the German states, Bohemia and Italy and bankrupted most of the nations. Armies were mostly sustained through self-funding, by means of money taken or tribute extorted from the reimbursements where they functioned in. This encouraged a form of chaos that imposed unadorned hardship on inhabitants of the occupied territories, thus leading to the endangerment of multiple nations in Europe.
Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, an anti-war theatre bit, is set in the setting of the Thirty Years' War. Mother Courage is one of 9 plays that Brecht wrote in an effort to pawn the rise of Fascism and Nazism. In response to the invasion of Poland by the German armies of Adolf Hitler in 1939, Brecht wrote Mother Courage as an immediate response, in a little over a month.
Following Brecht's own philosophies for political plays, the play is not set in modern times but during the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648. It follows the prosperities of Anna Fierling, nicknamed "Mother Courage", a wily canteen woman with the Swedish Army who is determined to make her living from the warfare around her. Over the sequence of the play, she loses all three of her children, Swiss Cheese, Eilif, and Kattrin, to the same war from which she sought to gain an income.
The possible reason for why the playwright chose this setting for the play, would be to reflect on the truth about how manye families lost their lives and to bring to light, the fact that even those who sought to seek some sort of profit through this mayhem would naturally be affected just as much as the other victims. The idea was to confront the ideas of War, and the play does so by confronting those who think they can gain something out of it, whereas eventually we realize, they become the victims too.