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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
The style of Mother Courage and her Children is discordant and distancing. Brecht mixes stark social commentary, in the form of biting remarks, with jolly music. He mixes light banter with stark death. He writes scenes structured to create suspense and spoils what happens in them with the stage directions. This mixing of elements that typically do not go together is typical of modernist works. By using a variety of stylistic elements, Brecht breaks up conventions in order to disrupt audience immersion and force viewers to consider the underlying meaning of the play.
Through a strange and unconventional mixture of style elements, Brecht denies the audience any form of escapism. The play forces the audience to recognize that they are watching a form of fiction, even if the events on stage sometimes feel real. This stylistic decision brings to light a fact about the play: it is not a specific play about the Thirty Years’ War, it’s a play about both war in general and the war contemporary audiences found themselves in—that is, World War II. The points that Brecht makes about war being brutal, useless, and hypocritical can apply to any war, but because the play was written during World War II, the audience was meant to be watching the events on stage and to be thinking about the current events happening in their world.
Related Themes:
