CHAPTER - III WAR IS A BUSINESS PROPOSITION : MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN

Transcription

1 100 CHAPTER - III WAR IS A BUSINESS PROPOSITION : MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN War is ridiculous, the dream of Patriots and heroes It is a fraud, a hallow show - Bernard Shaw, Arms and The Man Mother Courage and her Children, is an anti war play which depicts the hateful implications of the war. In writing the play, Brecht is highly concerned about the imminence of the Second World War. He completed this play just before the commencement of the war. Brecht hoped to make a political statement with the play which draws parallels between thirty year s of war, a war between the Catholics and the Protestants during 1618 to 1648 and the Second World War. For this play Brecht is indebted to a German playwright of 17* century, Grimmelhausen. He produced one of the greatest German narratives of the times, Simplicissimus. He also wrote another book The Life of the Arch Imposter and Adventurers Courage which is the immediate source of Brech s play Brecht has only taken the title and the atmosphere of the play. As in the play, life of Galileo, he historicises the impending Second World War to the 17th century war in Germany. His chief intention in writing the play is to establish relationship between Capitalism and War. He has also kept in mind Hitler, and he wants to demonstrate the fact that one of the variants of Capitalism is Fascism. Capitalism, in order to survive, perpetuates war and the victims are always the small

2 101 people. He also shows how religion is linked to war. The play is significant not only for its thematic content but also for Brecht s potentiality as an epic writer. In this play, he brings out all epic elements to make the play more effective. Above all he hoped that this play would make the audience to say no to the wars in the future. The play opens with a song of Mother Courage. When she appears on the stage, seated on it are Mother Courage and her daughter, Kattrin. The wagon is pulled by Mother Courage, sons Eillif and Swiss Cheese. Mother Courage tells sergeant and recruiting officer that her name is Anna Fierling and she is nick named as Mother Courage because she drove through the bombardments of Riga with fifty loaves of bread when they are going moldy. The soldiers are primarily interested in getting one of her sons. They distract her attention and sneak off with Eilif. Mother courage follows Swedish Army and meets her son Eilif, after two years. Eilif is delighted to see his mother. He narrates to his mother his adventures in the Army. Swiss Cheese also joins as paymaster of the Second Protestant Regiment. The Catholics attack the Protestants and Swiss Cheese runs away with the cash box Swiss cheese goes in search a safe place to hide a cash box, but he is captured by soldiers of the Catholic army. Mother Courage takes the help of Yvette to free her son from the Catholic soldiers. But Mother Courage loses her son, as she haggles too long over the money, to be given as a bribe to the soldiers. Mother Courage goes to complain with the Catholic officer against the soldiers, who have damaged her wagon. She also meets another angry soldier. She tries to cool

3 102 down the angry soldier, through the Song of Great Capitulation. Eventually, she decides not to complain. Mother Courage is being followed by the Chaplain and they arrive at a war ravaged village near Leipzig. When Mother Courage refuses to part with the five officer shirts, for the bandage to the wounded soldier, Kattrin threatens to spank her mother. Kattrin saves a child from a ruined house. General Tilly of the Catholic Army has been accidentally killed, and his soldiers, instead of honouring their general by attending his funeral, are getting drunk. The Chaplain wants to have an intimate relationship with Mother Courage, talks ill of Cook. Kattrin is attacked by the soldiers and her face is badly scarred. Mother Courage curses the war. She once again sings a chorus from The Song of Mother Courage. The death of the Swedish King has brought peace, having stocked up on supplies in the expectation of a long war, Mother Courage is now anxious about her stocked up goods. Eilif is going to be executed for killing and robbing a peasant after peace was declared. The Chaplain and the Cook decide not to tell the news of execution of Eilif to Mother Courage When the war once again breaks out, Mother Courage is back in the business. Mother Courage rejects the offer of Cook, to go along with him, without Kattrin. Kattrin beats the drum, climbing to the top of the house, to protect the Protestant, town Halle, from the Catholic army. But she was shot dead by the Catholic soldiers. Mother Courage is shocked at the death of Kattrin. She tries to convince

4 103 herself that Kattrin may be sleeping. She is also not aware of the fact that Eilif is dead. Mother Courage gives some money to the peasants, for the burial expenses of Kattrin, she sets off after the soldiers, who march to battle singing The song of Mother Courage II The first scene of the play is set in a remote province in Sweden where, as the recruiting sergeant complains, there has been no war for years, and where men are in consequence happy but undisciplined. In the first scene itself Brecht discusses the human comedy of war in an ironic manner. The recruiting officer is finding it difficult to enlist new soldiers because the population of the town and the surrounding areas is absolutely indifferent to the war that is going on. He praises the war as a time of organization and efficiency in which man can find identity and useful function. He says:. You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization. In a war, peace is one big waste of equipment Any thing goes, no one gives a damn. But once the war is started everybody wants that the war should continue, like a gambler who, having lost money does not want to stop but goes on gambling... 1 been places where they have not had a war in seventy years and you know what? The people cant remember their own names! It takes a war to fix that. In a war, everyone registers everyone s name on a list. (4) 1 The morality mouthed here is an inverted one hardly needs to be said. The matter of fact fashion in which men speak draws our attention to the hideous absurdity of their remarks. As W.H. Auden points out that the capitalist society makes its

5 104 citizens Unknown. Individuals in the society have no identity. Brecht ironically states that war only could give identity to individuals. During the war time people are enlisted, as the cattle are enlisted. There will be a dearth of the individuals. Individuals will become consumptive products as the cattle. The governments will forcibly enlist the individuals. Death will be extolled as the highest value in the war. Charles R. Lyons rightly points out: War is a value in the Seargeant s attitude because it simplifies exploitation in its efficient use of people and property. The seargent s equivocal sense of honour is revealed as he describes the dishonour of an escaped recruit, who deserted after he had been tricked into enlisting while drunk: There is no loyalty left in the world, no trust, no faith, no sense of honour. The soldiers are motivated by necessity, committed to the logic of exploitation.2 The comments of sergeant and recruiting officer is followed by the appearance of Mother Courage. Mother Courage sings an ironic song, which also appears at the end of the Scene 7, adjuring all good Christians but particularly Christian officers, to see to it that they may go to their hell-pit courageously! She sings the song as follows: Christians, awake! The winter is gone! The snows depart, the dead sleep on. And though you may not long survive Get our of bed and look alive! (4) The song of Mother Courage, is a kind of singing commercial aimed at stirring up buyers for the wares she has to sell. It also indicates as to what extent Mother Courage depends on war, with its constant threat of disaster, in her business. Yet the

6 105 scene also suggests a kind of beatitude. The vital, singing family, is to be victimized by the war on which their prosperity is based. Eric Bentley brings out the parody of the song, when he says : It could be said that every thing is there from the start, for the first thing Mother Courage does is to try and sell things by announcing an early death for her prospective customers. The famous song of Mother Courage is the most extraordinary partly of the kind of song any real vivandiere might try to attract customers with Mother Courage come and buy! Is nothing other than come and die! (3) When sergeant asks her how she got name Mother Courage, she replies: They call me Mother Courage, because I was afraid I would be ruined. So I drove through the bombardment of Riga like a mad woman, with fifty loaves of bread in my coat. They were going moldy, I couldn t please my self. (5) The above lines illustrate the business attitude of Mother Courage. Brecht ironically comments on the virtue of Courage which Anna Fierling possess. In explaining how Mother Courage got her name, Brecht shows that her thoughts were not on courage but on business. Thus, the human comedy of Mother Courage is bought out very vividly by Brecht in the first scene itself. Brecht sees an individual as malleable human personality as infinitely changeable because there is no such thing as an eternal soul and therefore man is basically the product of the social and economic pressures of capitalism. Eric Bentley observes:

7 106 Did those who gave her the name intend a joke against an obvious coward? Or did they think she was driven by heroic valor when in fact she was impelled by sheer necessity? Either way her act is utterly devoid of the moral quality imputed. Whether in cowardice or in down-to-earth realism, her stance is Falstaffian 4 There is also the human comedy in the origins of Mother Courage s children. Each of her children was begotten by a different man in a different country. Thus her three children represent three different nationalities. She had married one man after the other; or, perhaps, she had not really married any one of them in the strict sense of the word. That is why she says to the sergeant about herself and her children So we all have our own names.(6) The girl, Kattrin, is half German, while the elder son Eilif is Polish, and the younger son is Swiss. It is nothing but a ridiculous parody of the appropriate of fathers by their offspring. Sielglinde Lug observes : The notion that the mother image ought to be kept pure for the children is ridiculed when she admonishes the sergeant to speak decently to her in front of the children. An added irony here is that by convention motherhood is only good- even sacred- when it is legal. Only in Marriage can fathers have legitimate control over their offspring and thus the future. In Mother Courage such assumptions are shattered.5 The human comedy of death is presented in the first scene itself. Mother Courage ironically prophesies the death of her children. She wants that no son of hers is going to get himself killed, looking for military glory. When she finds that the sergeant is persisting in his efforts to recruit Eiliff, she tries to dampen his enthusiasm in this matter by offering to tell his fortune. She persuades the sergeant to draw his lot and, when he draws a slip with the sign of a black cross on it, she tells him that he

8 107 would die in the course of the war, thus meeting a premature end. She manipulates in such a way that all the slips that she had put together into the helmet wore the same sign, one of the slips being black. The sergeant feels demoralized by what she tells him on the basis of his picking up a slip with the black cross on it. Subsequently she plays the same trick upon all her three children. The sergeant also ironically prophesies the death of her children, when he makes the following comment: When a war gives you all you earn One day it may claim something in return! (13) Mother Courage understands the nature and the character of each of her children. She describes Eilif as a brave man just as his father was, and says that he would meet a sad end in the course of the war if he does not use his head. She describes her younger son as an honest boy. She wants her daughter Kattrin that she should not be too kind. Mother courage wants her sons to behave in such a way that they can survive the cruelties of war. She says: Sensible thing is to stay with your mother, never mind if they poke fun at you and call you chicken, just you laugh (10) The sole purpose is to keep herself and her family safe and alive In the fulfilment of this difficult and ultimately fruitless task, she employs ruthlessness, charm, bribery, guile and simple horse sense, always true to her coward s creed that discretion is the better part of valour. Robert Brustein observes :... a victim of war, but she is also an instrument of the war and the embodiment of evils 6

9 108 The title of the play, Mother Courage and Her children, indicates the significance of children in the play. The play is not merely of Mother Courage but also of her children. What happens to them is equally important for the action than what happens to Courage herself. In spite of Mother Courage being shrewd and sharp, she loses her elder son, Eilief, to the recruiting officer. This loss is an ominous anticipation of what is to follow. As Walter Weideli rightly observes : Mother Courage loses her son because he was selling by shrewd bargaining or because of the attraction of the profit. In this way she becomes an accomplice to the murder of her son. In this conflict between love and interest, interest has last word. Is Mother Courage guilty? No she is rather vanquished by the force of things.7 Eilif shows himself to be a fearless and daring man. That was also the impression, about him in the opening scene. His daring act comes out in the manner in which he faced a group of hostile peasants. He also shows himself to be a good strategist. When the peasants were about to cut him into pieces, he burst into laugh, there by surprising his enemies who stood still at his strange behaviour. He engaged them in talk and then, seizing his sword, attacked them suddenly, killing all of them. He says: I laughed. And so we got to talking, I came right down to business and said: Twenty guilders an ox is too much. I bid fifteen. Like I wanted to buy. That foxed them. So while they were scratching their heads, I reached for my good sword and cut them into ribbons. Necessity knows no law, huh?(16)

10 109 The commander is greatly impressed by Eilif s exploits. He tells Eilif that he has the makings of a Julius Caesar. The nature of Eilif s heroic exploits reflects Brecht s attitude towards military glory. Brecht in all the scenes of the play develop a complicated elaboration of greed as the primary motive of human action. Brecht also brings out the human comedy of virtues, when Chaplain says: Our Lord made five hundred loaves out of five so that no necessity would arise. So when he told men to love their neighbours, their bellies were full (16). So virtue is only possibility when greed has been satisfied. As Charles R. Lyons rightly observe: In this cynical exposition of a virtue based upon expedience, Brecht has the commander honour the bravery of Eilif 8 Mother Courage also talks in terms of the possibility or desirability of virtues in a corrupt world. In Brecht s words with her oldest son she is afraid of his bravery, but counts in his cleverness, with second son, she is afraid of his stupidity, but counts in honesty, with her daughter, she is afraid of her pity but counts on her dumbness. Later in the play her fears prove to be justified. In the course of her conversation with the cook, she says that a good army commander is one who wins a battle by virtue of his strategy and not by means of the bravery of his soldiers. In other words, a good army commander does not need brave soldiers as much as he needs brains. She says: All virtues which a well-regulated country with a good king or a good general would not need. In a good country virtues would not be necessary. Everybody could be quite ordinary, middling, and, for all I care, cowards.(17)

11 110 These lines clearly indicate Brecht s concept of a new world. War becomes redundant when men live with the other men harmoniously. This harmonious relationships between human beings is possible, only when the basic needs of men are met sufficiently. Swiss cheese is the pay master of a Protestant regiment. He is entrusted with the cash box. When Catholics attack Protestant regiment, Swiss Cheese runs away with cash box but he is captured by soldiers of Catholic Army. He refuses to surrender the cash-box. Mother Courage feels that the honesty shown by her son is not desirable. Fredric Even observes : If virtues are dangerous in society today, then venality may be blessing. This is one of the Brecht s favourite themes. 9 With the help of Yvette, a whore, Mother Courage gets a colonel in the Catholic Army to offer two hundred guilders for her wagon. With this two hundred, Yvette is to bribe one of the Catholic soldiers to let Swiss Cheese escape. Mother Courage faith in bribing is very strong as is reflected in her thinking. She says: I thank God they can be bribed. After all, they are men. They are not wolves. They are human and after money. God is merciful and men are bribable, that is how His will is done on earth as it is in Heaven. Corruption is our only hope. As long as there is corruption, there will be merciful judges and even the innocent may get off. (36) Brecht is ironically stating that how money decides human virtues. In the corrupt society, there is very little chance of innocent people getting justice. As long

12 Ill as class society exists, corruption is also going to exist. This also has the sanction of the Almighty. Mother Courage wants to save her son by mortgaging her wagon to Yvette. But Yvette wants to purchase the wagon. Mother Courage is not willing to sell the wagon, because it is her livelihood. She takes the money too seriously to offer a bigger bribe than necessary. She wants to part with less money as a bribe to Yvette, than what she intends to give earlier. Yvette returns shortly and says the soldiers would not accept the offer. Moreover, roll of drums signifying a verdict is due any minute. Now she is caught up in a dilemma and she is put to a great and stem test for the first time in her life. She is caught in the human comedy of contradiction, whether to choose business or motherhood. When she comes to know that the cash-box is gone, her inclination is towards the business. But when the situation becomes desperate, she is prepared to lose two hundred guilders. But the soldiers are in a hurry and her prolonged bargaining is climaxed by the terrible realization, when she says: I believe I have haggled too long. (37) This has resulted in her son being shot down by Catholic soldiers and his dead body is thrown on a garbage heap because, his mother is afraid to claim the body. As Robert Brustein observes : Tom between the contradictory demands of self-survival and mother love, courage has in effect killed her own child. And she suffers the consequence in terror and remorse, looking on the corpse in dumb agony and choking back the scream which rises in her throat lest she give sigh of recognition.10

13 112 Mother Courage s self-control, when she refuses to acknowledge her son s body indicates her urge to survive. David Richard Jones rightly points out: When she had to deny his corpse, Brecht brought the dramatic tension and suspense to a peak in order to provide another schematic illustration of her conflicting necessities (the wagon the boy) and her contradictory motives (stay in business or protect the family)" Mother Courage fails in judging the situation. Her show of Courage proves itself to be very fatal. In fact, it is the virtue of courage by which she survives through this inhuman war. But she has shown her wisdom at the inappropriate situation. After enduring a lot of suffering, on account of the loss of her son, Mother Courage capitulates. The scene 4 is dominated by the Song of Great Capitulation. She feels that in this world of class dominated society, it is not tenable to assert ones own will against the authority. She strikes the note of accommodation, compromise rather than assertion. Eric Bentley observes. Scene four is one of the several in this play which one can regard as the whole play in miniature. The main purpose of the play, for Brecht, was, I think, to generate what it shows... Capitulation is not just an idea but a feeling, an agony in fact, and is located not just in the scene of Great Capitulation but in the whole play of Mother Courage. Every thing that happens is related to it.12 She intends to lodge a complaint with Catholic officer against some of his soldiers who have wrecked her canteen wagon and also imposes heavy fine upon her. She is now joined by a young Catholic soldier who is very much angry with the captain. Mother Courage warns him against adopting an attitude of defiance towards

14 113 his officer. The song, The Song of Great Capitulation which she sings, is a kind of condensed life-story of herself. Mother Courage tells the soldier that it is futile to protest and also explains how she has changed from youthful idealism to cynical realism At every step in her life she had been advised by others to adopt more practical line. She thought that she was the master of fate and would touch the stars in the sky. But she found out that she could achieve very little and she surrendered herself to the circumstances. She sings as follows: I am the master of my fate. I will take on orders from on one Then little bird whispers! The bird says: Wait a year so And marching with the band you will go Keeping in step, now fast now slow And piping out your little spiel Then one day the battalions wheel And you go down upon your knees To God Almighty if you please. (43) Brecht ridicules the petty-bourgeois pious sayings like Man proposes, God disposes, Where there is a will there is a way, You cant hold good man down. He exposes the hollowness of these slogans. The growth of the individual in a society, does not depend on himself. On the other hand, the individual development depends on the entire society. But the capitalist society creates an illusion that an individual can become great by his own strength. This illusion helps the exploiters to exploit easily.

15 114 Mother Courage feels that an individual anger is not sufficient to change the world. An individual anger cannot be translated into action. It is nothing but exhibition of ones own emotion, where a lot of energy will be expended. The collective anger has the capacity to alter the world. Charles R. Lyons succinctly points out: In a larger sense, the capitulation, is her acceptance of war as a fact of human existence, away of life which brings her food, shelter and comfort. Her great capitulation which is one perspective of her acceptance of the business of war, killing and plunder, ironically makes her more vulnerable to the possibility of losing her family to war.13 The human comedy of war and religion pervades throughout the play. The Thirty years of war started as a war of religion. It began as a war between the Catholic countries and the Protestant countries of Europe. But, as the war progresses the religious issue became less and less important, while political and militaristic issues goes on gaining ground. Keith A. Dickson observes: For Brecht war belonged to that same process of economic exploitation that allegedly characterises all class-based society, the culmination of business by other means. Mother Courage does not know the whole truth about the war but she is certainly at this point articulating Brecht s Marxist attitude.14 Brecht criticises the role of religion in the war, through the character of Chaplain. Brecht in criticising the religion, follows the dictum of Marx all criticism start from the criticism of religion. Religion is art of making men drunk with ecstasy in order to divert their attention from the evils heaped upon them here below by those

16 115 who govern them. There is always a collusion between religion and politics, which led Marx to say that Religion is the opium of the people Brecht also criticises religion in some of his plays like, Puntila, The Mother, St. Joan of Stockyards and The Good Person of Szechwan. The Chaplain says:... But to fall in the war is not a misfortune. It is a blessing. This is a war of religion. Not just war but a special ones a religious one, and therefore pleasing unto God.(24) In contrast to the opinion of the Chaplain, the cook believes that the war is like any other war, in which one can find all the cheating plunder and rape. The situation presented by Brecht is ironical that the God which the war is supposed to please is not around to help the participants. Chaplain says that he has the gift of the tongue with which he can fill the whole regiment with a desire to plunge into battle. Religion gives importance to the mental labour than to the body labour can be seen in the exchange of dialogue between Mother Courage and Chaplain When asked by Mother Courage to chop some wood for her, he replies that he has had no training as a wood-cutter and that his sphere of activity has been the care of souls. How religion acts as an opium of the people can be seen in the dialogue of Chaplain. God has given me the gift of tongues. 1 can preach you out of your senses. (52) Brecht immediately contradicts this statement with a materialistic approach of Mother Courage, when she says :

17 116 1 need my senses. What would l do without them? (53) Brecht s criticism against the religion, is not an attack directly against religion, but those who preach religion. Since, Brecht believes Marxian principle that, the criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the highest being for man. Marx said, War is continuation of politics. Brecht altered this and said, war is a continuation of business by other means. Throughout the play there are many references to war. The Thirty years of war Brecht wrote in his notes on the play, was one of the first large scale wars that the Capitalism brought upon Europe. When he began writing the play, the Second World War was imminent. He also worked as an orderly in the First World War. The ballad that is sung by Eilif The fish wife and the soldier, had been taught to him, by his mother. He sings : To a soldier lad comes an old fishwife An this old fish wife, says she; A gun will shoot, a knife will knife You will drown if you fall in the sea. Keep away from the ice if you want my advice Says the old fishwife, says she. But the soldier lad laughed and he loaded his gun And he reached for his knife and he started to run: It is the life of a hero for me!(18) This song tells the story of a soldier-lad, who had an ambition to distinguish himself in the war. The irony is that, once a soldier is committed to the war, he is sure to die. Unmindful of his death, the soldier always thinks of his heroism, and present fame. The old woman in the ballad is none other than Mother Courage, sings the third

18 117 stanza of the song. The soldier is highly optimistic of his return from the war. But unfortunately, he is swept away by the tide. Brecht makes use of sea as a metaphor for war. The irresistible tide is the course of the war, to which Mother Courage and Her Children surrender. Brecht s hatred against war can also be seen in his poems. In his poems, he criticises bourgeois ideals like, patriotism and nationalism. Because in the name of these ideals, people are convinced to participate in the war. This is seen in a poem like, Legend of the Dead Soldier, written at the beginning of his career. This poem has created a scandal in Germany. The dead soldier is dug-up, pronounced fit for the active duty and, is encouraged to go to the war once again. This poem is about desecration of patriotic values. The other poems of him against war are, To my country man I read, About tank battles, and The ballad of Woman and the Soldier. Brecht views the war as a metaphor of exploitation by the big people and big business. War has become big industry. The principle of profit extends from big kings to little Mother Courage. All the characters in the play wants to extract profit out of war. War gives highest authority to men to exploit other man. Brecht brings about hypocrisy of war by the incident of General Tilly. When GeneralTilly of Catholic

19 Army has been accidentally killed and his soldiers instead of honouring their general by attending the funeral, indulge themselves in drinking. 118 Chaplain and Mother Courage, prophecy that war will never end. But they wish that war should stop for some time, so that the materials for the business can be stocked. The Chaplain sings a song: Peace makers shall the earth inherit We bless those men of simple worth. War makers have still greater merit; They have inherited the earth I will tell you my good sir, what peace is: The whole when all the chase is gone. And what is war? This is my thesis It is what the world is founded on. War is like love: it will always find a way Why should it end? (54) The irony of the poem is that peace is impossible in a class society because class society is ridden with violence and its foundation is firmly grounded on the principle of exploitation. Kattrin has been made mute, disfigured, and raped by war, only at this moment, Mother Courage becomes desperate and talks against the war to which her life is committed. She says: And this is War! A nice source of income. I must say! She is finished. How would she ever get a husband now? And she is crazy for children. Even her dumbness comes from the war. A soldier stuck something in her mouth when she was little. I will never see Swiss Cheese again, and where my Eilif is the Good Lord knows. Curse the War!(55)

20 119 But Mother Courage cursing the war is only a flicker in her mind. Her total dependence and her inclination towards the war can be seen in her song of Scene 7 and this song is an echo of song of the prologue. If war don t suit your description When victory comes you will be dead War is business proposition Not with cream - Cheese but steel and lead. (55) The shock of her daughter s rape having obliterated from her mind, it is once again business as usual for Mother Courage. She has not learnt anything from her experience. She feels miserable, when she comes to know that peace has established. Angered at the Mother Courage grumbling that peace will ruin her business chaplain says: You must not take name peace in vain, courage. Remember Your are a hyena of the battle field!... it shows that you want war, not peace for what you get out of it. But don t forget the proverb he who sups with the devil must use a long spoon! (60) The words of Chaplain prove to be right, when Eilif has become a victim of the war. Eilif fate has its own ironies. He is condemned to death for acts like those that made him a hero during the war time. Moreover, the peace during which he acted turns out to be only a short pause in a continuation of war. His death indicates dual morality of the world. In the words of Robert Brustein :

21 120 Having played the hero in God s own war by slaughtering number of innocent peasants who wished only to protect their cattle (here bravery turns into sadistic brutality) Eilif repeats this heroic exploit during an interlude of peace and is led off to be shot. Like Chaplain s Verdoux, he discovers that virtues in war time are considered crimes in peace time and that law and morality shift their ground to accommodate nation needs. 15 Mother Courage is not aware that she has lost her son and she feels elated when once again the war breaks out. She feels that it gives an abundant scope for exploitation and plunder. She sings a song: The war can care for all its people So long there is steel and lead Though steel and lead are stout supporters A war needs human beings too. (66) Mother Courage s capitulation is contrasted with the assertion of the will of her daughter, Kattrin. Kattrin s trait of kindness is demonstrated when she rescues a baby from a ruined house. She also threatens her mother, when Mother Courage refuses to give lines for bandaging the wounded soldiers. It is this love towards children that motivates her to sacrifice her life. Franz Norbert Mennemeier rightly points out: Kattrin s dumbness is symbol of the oppressed, tormented creature brings a loud accusation against the inhuman condition of the world. The girl, who is obsessed by an animal-like drive for love and motherhood, who suffers from compassion, must never by played as an idiot. Kattrin is completely normal. It is the world that is abnormal, which has terribly deformed her. 16 Mother Courage goes to town for business, leaving Kattrin at a farm house near Protestant town of Halle. Catholics are planning to attack the town, when all are

22 121 asleep. A Catholic lieutenant and some soldiers enter and force the two old peasants, their young son, and Kattrin to come out of the house. When one of the peasants mentions that there are children in the town, Kattrin becomes anxious. The peasants are worried about their grand children in the town, but they are not prepared to risk their lives, by sending warning signals to the town. While the peasant family is praying, Kattrin climbs to the roof of the farmhouse. She starts beating the drum, hoping to wake the town. Kattrin s beating the drum is contrasted to the prayer of the peasants, the most intimate expression of religion as an substitute for inaction. The peasant couple symbolises the incapacity of the religion to find a solution for any critical situations in the human life. The soldiers promise Kattrin, they will spare her mother, if she stops beating drum. But Kattrin continues to beat the drum. The lieutenant orders the young peasant to break up the wagon. Kattrin gets frightened by the whimpering noises, but beats the drum more loudly. The old peasants want Kattrin to stop as, they are afraid of the possible consequences for themselves, but their son urges her to go on. The soldiers kill the young peasant. Kattrin begins to cry, but her last feeble drumbeats are drowned out by the sound of shooting she is shot dead by the soldiers. But the town is awake and prepares herself to defend. Brecht, seems to ask a question, is there any meaning in the sacrifice of Kattrin, in a topsy- turvy of morals during the war. Charles R. Lyon s rightly points out:

23 122 The scene is clearly structured to define Kattrin s action as the embodiment of a pure compassion in clear contrast to the selfish greed of and egoism of the peasants and implicitly in contract to the conniving courage of her mother, Anna Fierling. 17 The act and death of Kattrin is one of the highly emotional scenes in Brechtian Canon. He is aware of the fact that there is a danger of spectators identifying with Kattrin. He says: The scene with the drum particularly stirred the spectator spectators may identify themselves with Kattrin in this scene; empathy may give them the happy feeling that they too possess such strength. But they are not likely to have experienced such empathy through out the play-in the first scenes for example. 18 The act of Kattrin is of instinct but not of reason as in the case of young comrade of the play The Measures Taken. Brecht holds the Marxist view that to love and to survive in this world is very difficult, because one denies the other. Virtues are dangerous even to the possessor. Raymond Williams rightly observes: Mother Courage is a dramatisation of conflicting insights that are not, but might be lived through. Its crisis is properly reached in the frantic drumming of the dumb girl.19 In the final scene of the play Mother Courage sits on the ground by the side of Kattrins dead body. Trying to convince herself that Kattrin may only be sleeping, Mother Courage sings her a lullaby. But the old peasants tell her once again that her daughter is dead. They remind her too that the soldiers are marching off. She had better get going if she doesn t want

24 123 to be left behind. Mother Courage who still doesn t know that Eilif is dead, gives the peasants some money to cover the expenses of burying Kattrin. Then she hitches herself to her wagon She finds she can pull it alone, there is not much in it any more. The wagon of Mother Courage is in fact has a symbolic function. On the one hand, it symbolises solidarity and endurance and onn the other, it is the burden of Mother Courage is in fact has a symbolic family, the massive object to which they are harnessed. It also symbolises the fourth child of Mother Courage. It can also be symbolising Mother Courage materialism and destructive force. The play ends with the words of Mother Courage, and a song by the soldiers. Mother Courage once again hopes to make profits in the war. She says : I must start up again in business (81) In uttering these words, Mother Courage creates an eternal image of enterprise, and she was the merchant mother at the nadir of life. Business is driving force in her. The atmosphere of business permeates the play from the beginning to the end. The plot is a series of business transactions as if life consisted of nothing else. We see soldiers reduced to pilfering their own stores and raping, murdering and robbing the peasants. We see peasants selling their last possessions valuing their cattle more highly than their lives, having their farms bombarded by armies which do not bother to establish which side they are on. The only figure to emerge with any moral credit is Kattrin.

25 124 Mother Courage is one of the most complex characters created by Brecht. She has a paradoxical combination of Courage and Ruin. Brecht has taken care to present the human comedy of Mother Courage. She is cunning, avaricious and selfish: yet she is also warm, vital and endowed with a keen sense of humour. Her cunning is but the other side of her quick wit; her avarice a negative form of a necessity and shrewd business sense; and her warmth, vitality and humour are her means of survival. Brecht deliberately adds negative elements to the character of Mother Courage by placing her in a completely different set of surroundings and inviting the audience to consider these as well. Through the framework of Mother Courage, Brecht presents the horror and hopelessness of the war. Brecht felt unhappy, when he comes to know that audience sympathised with Mother Courage. They looked at Mother Courage as Niobe - figure. Brecht never intended Mother Courage as a tragic character. Because he rejected the tragedy in the sense of Aristotle. Tragedy can be avoided through political means. He wanted a dialectical response from the audience. As Ronald Barthes says: For us war is not indisputable fatality. We see Mother Courage blind, we see what she does not see. Mother Courage is for us a ductile substance: she sees nothing, but we see through her; we understand, in the grip of this dramatic evidence which is the most immediate kind of persuasion, that Mother Courage is blind is the victim of what she does not see, which is a remediable evil. This theatre creates a decisive split with in us: we are at once Mother Courage and we are those who explain her; we participate in the blinding of Mother Courage and we see this same blinding; we are passive actors mired in war s fatality and free spectators led to the demystification of this fatality.20

26 125 Brecht presents the war not in terms of heroes but in terms of common people. His purpose is to show the misery of common people during the time of war. In the play, the trial of Lucullus, Brecht presents the horrors of the war through the eyes of fish wife and the farmer. The small people condemned the heroism exhibited by the King as it did not bring anything to them and moreover, they had to lose their children in the war. As Ronald Taylor observes: Modem capitalist society tested on the exploitation of human beings for the economic advantage of the few with an accompanying depersonalization and de humanisation of life... the activities of this society could only issue in imperialism and war.21 Lenin pointed out that the highest form of capitalism is imperialism. Imperialism in order to survive, perpetuates war, for the sake of capturing markets. This can be illustrated through the examples of First World War and Second World War. Once the war is waged, human beings are killed like guinea pigs. Brecht is highly concerned with the slaughtering of human beings during the war. He himself says, in a reply to Friedrich Wolf, a East German playwright: The play in question shows that courage has learnt nothing from the disaster that befall her. The play was written in 1938 when the writer foresaw a great war; he was not convinced that humanity was necessarily going to learn anything from the tragedy which he expected to strike it... But even if courage learns nothing else at least the audience can in my view learns nothing form her.22 The human comedy in Mother Courage is that she is aware of the dangers and destruction caused by the war. But, she is willing to participate in the war again. Because in the capitalist society, contradictions become more complex. So Brecht has

27 126 built up a complex frame work of personal, social economic and political forces which eventually determine the action of the individual figures. The contradictions in the human comedy of Mother Courage can be solved through the society, but not individually. Brecht has a strong faith in the audience capacity to understand and learn to resolve the contradiction collectively. Even after he returned from East Berlin he was mainly concerned with establishing peace in the world. As far as the technique of the play in bringing out the human comedy is concerned, Brecht mainly makes use of gestus, his main concept of epic theatre, apart from other elements of epic theatre. The action of this play has been laid in the 17th century, of which the most striking historical event was 30 years of war. The sub title of the play is also chronicle of 30 years of war. The war had lasted from 1618 to The play covers the period between 1624 to Brecht s main purpose in writing the play as to show that Germany of his own day was hovering on the brink of a catastrophe which would bring about destruction on a large scale compared to the destruction caused in Germany during 30 years of war. Each scene is the play is presented as an episode. There is a lot of time gap between the scenes. However, the continuity of the play is maintained. The episodes are not interwoven. Mother Courage and her family keep travelling from place to place. We find ourselves in Germany, in Poland and in Moravia. Different things happen at different place and at different times. It is a Swedish Town in the opening scene that Eiliff is taken away from her to be enlisted in the Swedish army in the year Two years later she is in Poland, where she learns that Eiliff has emerged as a

28 127 war hero. In Poland she also greets Yvette. It is here she loses Swiss Cheese who is executed under the orders of Catholic sergeant, and it is here that she, Kattrin and Chaplain becomes the prisoners of Catholics. There are as many as 11 songs in the play, with the exception in the scenes 5 and 11. For Brecht the songs are musical insertions that breaks the play s action and mood. In the first scene when recruiting officer and the Sergeant are talking about the war seriously, they are interrupted by Mother Courage s song. The whole song is full of irony and she presents the war as if it is a routine affair. The song of the Fish wife and the soldier, is the song of Eilif s gesture of triumph and he also dances with his sabre. There is a lot of irony in the song, Eilif sings the song without realising that he is going to have the same sad end as the soldier in the song. Ignorant of this, he still takes pride in being a soldier. The fish wife in the song is none no other than Mother Courage. She is aware of the fact that what would be the soldier life and how gruesome the end of the soldier s life. The play ends with the song which echoes the meaning of the 1st scene song, sung by Mother Courage. Soldiers are aware of the dangers, surprises and devastation bought out by the war. They go to war with a belief that only a miracle can save them. And they also know that miracles have had and their day. As long as capitalism exists, war also exists. Capitalist economy thrives more during the times of war. So there is a necessity for a war industry in all the capitalist countries. They see to it that war should take place in one country or the other. Their involvement may be direct or indirect. Even today people participate in the war in the name of Nationalism and Patriotism. Mother Courage at the end of the

29 128 play decides to move with the soldiers, because she fails to resolve the contradiction in which she is being caught. Brecht employs another technique of alienation in the play through the use of the concept of gestus. Through this concept he wants to show to the audiences rather than telling. Mother Courage is presented as a person of irreconcilable contradictions. Her moments of greed is in opposition to her moments of maternal feelings. When Kattrin was attacked by the soldiers, she becomes furious and blames the soldiers who caused injury to her daughter. But when she is blaming she also checks out whether the flour she had purchased is of good quality or not. After the death of Kattrin, Mother Courage sings a lullaby to her dead daughter and counts out coins to pay the peasants for the burial. Mother Courage takes out some coins from her leather bag, put one back and give the peasants the rest. In all grief Mother Courage as a business woman has not forgotten how to reckon the money with which is hard to come by. Brecht s making use of placards some times indicates comic undertones like Tilling victory at Leipzig costs Mother Courage four officer shirts (sc. v) The same year sees the death of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolopus at the battle of Luzzen. Peace threatens to ruin courage s business. All the techniques Brecht makes use of in this play to bring out human comedy focus his attention on the audience. He wants the audience to examine how capitalism affects the institutions like family and religion. He wants to communicate the fact that the things have not changed since the World War II and at the same time, people have not learnt any lessons from the war.

30 129 REFERENCES 1. Bertolt Brecht Mother Courage and Her Children (Ed) John Willet. (London : Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1975) All further references and notes on the play by Brecht are to this edition and the page numbers are quoted parenthetically at the end of the quotation. 2. Charles R Lyons, Bertolt Brecht: The Despair and the Polemic (London : Southern Illinois University Press, 1968) Eric Bentley : The Brecht Commentaries (New York Grover Press, 1981) Ibid., Sieglinde Lug : The Good Women Demystified in Communication from the International Brecht Society Vol. XIV No. 1 (1984) 3 6. Robert Brustein Bertolt Brecht in his Theatre of Revolt An approach to Modern Drama (New York : Little Brown and Company, 1964) Walter Weideli: Art of Bertolt Brecht (Tr) by Daniel Russel. (New York: New York University Press, 1963) Charles R Lyons, Bertolt Brecht: The Despair and the Polemic Frederic Ewen. Bertolt Brecht: His life, His Art and His Times (London : The Citadel Press, 1970). 10. Robert Brustein Bertolt Brecht in his Theatre of Revolt An approach to modem drama David Richard Jones, Bertolt Brecht and Courage Model 1949 : Great Directors at Work Stainslavysky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook.(Califomia : University of California of Press, 1986) Eric Bentley : The Brecht Commentaries, Charles R Lyons, Bertolt Brecht: The Despair and the Polemic Keith A. Dickson : Towards Utopia : A study of Brecht (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1978) 100.

31 Robert Brustein Bertolt Brecht in his Theatre of Revolt An approach to Modem Drama (New York : Little Brown and Company, 1964) Franz Norbert Mennemeier. Mother Courage and Her Children in 20th Century Views on Bertolt Brecht ed. by Peter Demetz (Engle Wood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1962) Charles R. Lyons, Bertolt Brecht: The Despair and the Polemic Cited in David Richard Jones, Bertolt Brecht and Courage Model 1949 : Great Directors at Work Stainslavysky, Brecht Kazan Brook Raymond Williams, Modem Tragedy (London : The Hogarth Press, 1992) Ronald Barthes, Mother Courage Blind Critical essays translated by Richard Howard (North Western University Press, 1972) Ronald Taylor : Literature and Society in Germany The Drama in Exile (Sussex : The Harvester Press, 1989) Brecht s reply to Friedrich Wolf, cited in Frederic Ewen, Bertolt Brecht : His life, His art, and His times (London : Calder and Boyars, 1970) 361.