Previous
Profit, Violence, and Power
Themes and Colors
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.
In theory, Mother Courage’s war profiteering is an expression of motherly love: she wants to make enough money to give her children a secure, comfortable life. But in practice, her work requires moral compromises that make it all but impossible for her to show true motherly love. She might feel responsible for her children, but she also exposes them to the trauma and violence of war—which leads to their deaths—and loses the compassion, empathy, and sense of justice that real nurture requires. For instance, she constantly berates Kattrin, and she indirectly gets Swiss Cheese killed by trying to bargain down the bounty on his life in the moments before his execution.
Crucially, Kattrin does preserve the maternal instinct that Mother Courage loses. But this is hard to notice at first because Kattrin doesn’t speak: she has not spoken a word since a soldier attacked her when she was a young girl. Still, she demonstrates her nurturing qualities in the fifth scene, when Mother Courage wants to leave a peasant family’s baby for dead and Kattrin runs into the family’s home to save it instead. Thus, even though Kattrin communicates primarily through grunts and gestures, it becomes clear that she deeply yearns to give other children the maternal love that she never received. This dynamic is the key to understanding the play’s climax, in which Kattrin sacrifices her own life to warn the people of a local town that soldiers are coming to massacre them—but only once she learns that there are children there. Notably, after Kattrin’s death, Mother Courage fails to confront the depth of her loss—she instead sings a lullaby to Kattrin’s corpse and remarks that maybe she is just sleeping. This reflects how, in her ill-fated attempt to save her children through the war effort, Mother Courage has actually sacrificed the personal qualities that make deep human connection possible. In contrast, Kattrin demonstrates that people can hold onto their capacity for love and nurture even in the darkest of situations—so long as they do not stoop to the level of committing atrocities themselves.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Love and Nurture ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Love and Nurture appears in each scene of Mother Courage and Her Children. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
scene length:
Get the entire Mother Courage and Her Children LitChart as a printable PDF.
Love and Nurture Quotes in Mother Courage and Her Children
Below you will find the important quotes in Mother Courage and Her Children related to the theme of Love and Nurture.
Scene 1
Quotes
Well, there’s yours, Eilif, my boy! (As EILIF takes the slip, she snatches it and holds it up.) See? A cross!
[…]
Take yours, Swiss Cheese. You should be a better bet—you’re my good boy. (SWISS CHEESE draws.) Don’t tell me it’s a cross? Is there no saving you either? Just look, Sergeant—a black cross!
[…]
(to KATTRIN) Now all I have left is you. You’re a cross in yourself but you have a kind heart. (She holds the helmet up but takes the slip herself.) Oh dear, there must be some mistake! Don’t be too kind, Kattrin, don’t be too kind—there’s a black cross in your path! So now you all know: be careful! Be very careful! (MOTHER COURAGE climbs on her wagon preparing to leave.)
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Scene 2
Quotes
MOTHER COURAGE. My eldest. It’s two years since I saw him. He must be high in favor—the Commander inviting him to dinner! And what do you have to eat? Nothing. The Commander’s guest wants meat! Take my advice: buy the capon. The price is one hundred hellers.
(The COMMANDER has sat down with EILIF and the CHAPLAIN.)
COMMANDER. (roaring) Dinner, you pig! Or I’ll have your head!
COOK. This is blackmail. Give me the damn thing!
Scene 3
Quotes
YVETTE (re-enters, pale). You’ve done it—with your haggling. You can keep your wagon now. He got eleven bullets in him. I don’t know why I still bother about you, you don’t deserve it, but I just happened to hear they don’t think the cash-box is really in the river. They think it’s here. And they think you were in with him.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
SERGEANT. There’s a man here we don’t know the name of, but he has to be registered to keep the records straight. He bought a meal from you. Look at him. See if you know him. (He draws back the sheet.) You know him? (MOTHER COURAGE shakes her head.) What? You never saw him before he bought that meal? (MOTHER COURAGE shakes her head.) Lift him up. Throw him on the garbage dump. He has no one that knows him.
(They carry him off.)
Scene 6
Quotes
IN WAR MORE CHRISTIAN SOULS THAN EVER
REACH THEIR ETERNAL RESTING PLACE.
[…]
AND WHAT IS WAR? THIS IS MY THESIS:
IT’S WHAT THE WORLD IS FOUNDED ON.
War is like love: it’ll always find a way. Why should it end?
She’s finished. How would she ever get a husband now? And she’s crazy for children. Even her dumbness comes from the war. A soldier stuck something in her mouth when she was little. I’ll never see Swiss Cheese again, and where my Eilif is the Good Lord knows. Curse the war!
Scene 9
Quotes
MOTHER COURAGE. Kattrin! Where do you think you’re going? (She examines the bundle.) Ah! So you were listening ? I told him: nothing doing—he can have his lousy inn. (Now she sees the skirt and pants.) Oh, you stupid girl! Now what if I’d seen that, and you’d been gone! (KATTRIN tries to leave. Her mother holds her.) And don’t imagine I sent him packing on your account. It was the wagon. They can’t part me from my wagon. Now we’ll put the cook’s things here where he’ll find ’em, that silly man. You and I are leaving. (She climbs upon the wagon and throws the rest of the COOK’s few things down on to the pants.) There! He’s fired! The last man I’ll ever take into this business! Get into harness, Kattrin. This winter will pass like all the others.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Scene 11
Quotes
LIEUTENANT (pointing to the wagon on which KATTRIN has appeared). There’s another. (A SOLDIER pulls her out.) Is this everybody?
OLD PEASANT. That’s our son.
PEASANT WOMAN. And that’s a girl that can’t talk. Her mother’s in town buying up stocks because the shopkeepers are running away and selling cheap.
OLD PEASANT. They’re canteen people.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
(KATTRIN, unperceived, has crept off to the wagon, has taken something out of it, put it under her skirt, and has climbed up the ladder to the roof.)
PEASANT WOMAN. Be mindful of the children in danger, especially the little ones, be mindful of the old folk who cannot move, and of all Christian souls, O Lord.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
(The soldiers arrive with the gun.)
LIEUTENANT. Set it up! (Calling while the gun is set up on forks:) Once and for all, stop that drumming! (Still crying, KATTRIN is drumming as hard as she can.) Fire!
(The soldiers fire. KATTRIN is hit. She gives the drum another feeble beat or two, then collapses.)
LIEUTENANT. So that ends the noise.
(But the last beats of the drum are lost in the din of cannon from the town. Mingled with the thunder of cannon, alarm-bells are heard in the distance.)
FIRST SOLDIER. She made it.
Scene 12
Quotes
LULLAY, LULLAY, WHAT’S THAT IN THE HAY?
THE NEIGHBOR’S KIDS CRY BUT MINE ARE GAY.
THE NEIGHBOR’S KIDS ARE DRESSED IN DIRT:
YOUR SILKS WERE CUT FROM AN ANGEL’S SKIRT.
THEY ARE ALL STARVING. YOU HAVE A CAKE
IF IT’S TOO STALE, YOU NEED BUT SPEAK.
LULLAY, LULLAY, WHAT’S RUSTLING THERE?
ONE LAD FELL IN POLAND. THE OTHER IS—WHERE?
