Mother Courage Gives Us Courage

Is Mother Courage courageous or selfish? From beginning to end, we see that mostly everything Mother Courage does is purely for the sake of her business. In the beggining, she keeps her children in the wagon with her to pull it in order to carry on with her business. In the end, when Kattrin dies, she gets up and says, "Hopefully, I'll manage to pull the wagon alone. I bet I can do it, not much in it any more. I have to get back in business." She quickly gets over her daughter's death and immediately starts to think about her business. Even the chaplain can see that Mother Courage feeds off of the war. In scene eight, he says to Mother Courage, "I see you as you are, a woman who hates peace and loves war, as long as you can make money off it,". Scene eight displays her love for the war for it is what keeps her business alive, and her business is what keeps her and her children alive.

So if she does try to keep her children alive, that does not make her selfish, correct? Well, I wouldn't completely agree to that. The moment she shook her head no was the moment her son, Swiss Cheese, died. Mother Courage, I believe, is the reason all her children dies. She follows the war. The war destroyed her morality, if she even had any in the first place, and she ultimately ends up alone probably still following the war. I think the reason Brecht made Mother Courage the way he did was to give us the courage to act. He created this raw and intense character to show us what war can do to people, how war can drive us to selfishness.

Word Count: 303

Works Cited

Brecht, Bertolt. Mother Courage and her Children. Trans. Tony Kushner. London: Bloomsbury

Methuen Drama, 2009. Print

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