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Scene 9
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 and Kattrin pull their wagon up to a well-to-do farmhouse. A voice sings inside, and they stop to listen. The anonymous singer performs “The Song of Shelter,” which is about planting a tree in spring and watching it bloom during the summer, then spending the winter sheltering inside the farmhouse. Mother Courage and Kattrin move on.
This brief scene depends on the juxtaposition between Mother Courage and Kattrin’s transient life, on the one hand, and the farmhouse residents’ comfortable, settled one, on the other. Whereas Mother Courage once looked down on peasants as poor and stupid, now she envies them. The message is clear: Mother Courage’s lifelong pursuit of wealth has been a grave error; instead of joining the war effort, she should have stayed home in Sweden and built an ordinary life for herself.
Themes
