Mother Courage and Her Children Themes

Mother Courage and Her Children is above all an emphatic condemnation of war. The play takes place during the Thirty Years’ War, a brutal conflict between Catholics and Protestants that devastated Europe in the 1600s, killing as much as half the population of what is now Germany through violence, starvation, and disease. In the play, Mother Courage and her children Eilif, Swiss Cheese, and Kattrin make a living operating a canteen for the…

Mother Courage’s most distinctive (and most jarring) attribute is that she views the war primarily as a business opportunity. She cares far more about profit than about supporting the troops, making a name for herself, or even who lives and dies. Indeed, she makes her priorities clear when she tells Swiss Cheese, “Nothing must come, not even the seasons. Only your books must balance.” Mother Courage despairs when the war ends before she…

The Thirty Years’ War was technically a conflict between Catholics and Protestants, but Mother Courage and Her Children makes it clear that the war was really about power, not God. While the competing empires used religion to forge alliances and justify violence, Brecht suggests that their faith was never sincere. For instance, the Chaplain initially preaches that death in battle is really holy martyrdom on behalf of the Protestant cause, but by the play’s halfway…

More than any individual work, Bertolt Brecht is best remembered today for his revolutionary approach to theater, which he saw less as a form of entertainment than a political tool, a means to shape public opinion and eventually change the world. A conventional drama or comedy is supposed to give audiences a sense of connection with the characters throughout and a feeling of resolution at the end. But Brecht sought to do the opposite. By…