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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mother Courage and Her Children, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War, Failure, and Despair
Profit, Violence, and Power
Love and Nurture
Faith and Identity
Theater, Performance, and History
Summary
Analysis
Mother Courage sits on her wagon with her daughter Kattrin while her sons Eilif and Swiss Cheese pull it. She sings “The Song Of Mother Courage” while Kattrin plays the harmonica, and her sons join the refrains. The song describes how she sells soldiers beer and wine, which gives them the courage to face sure death in battle. She sings to the troops that she will sell them food to “fill up the hole in your belly / Before you fill one underground.” Winter is ending, she sings to them in the refrain, “And though you may not long survive, / Get out of bed and look alive!”
Like with all of the play’s songs, this opening number’s jovial tone sharply contrasts with its serious subject matter. Indeed, the play’s protagonists introduce Mother Courage’s morally dubious profession, then underline the war’s senselessness and brutality by suggesting that her real purpose is to give soldiers the liquor they need to accept a meaningless death. In this way, this scene strongly exemplifies Brecht’s famous distancing (or alienation) effect—the characters directly tell the audience the message that is supposed to be the play’s subtext. (Presumably, the actual Mother Courage would not have thought the things she sings about here.) This scene also advances the distancing effect through its form: rather than playing out any realistic scenes, the actors make it clear that they are performing a contrived spectacle for the audience. Notably, their haunting song is as much a warning for the audience—Europeans on the eve of World War II—as it is for the soldier characters in the play.
Themes
