Bertoly Brechts Mother Courage Drama Essay

Bertoly Brechts yield fortitude Drama EssayBertolt Brechts view on the make of business firm was that it should provoke its consultation to channel. The epic theatre, Karl Marx and German directors Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator were all inspiration for Brechts speculation on the social function of theatre. ( 2004 709)Brechts essays discipline for diversion or Theatre for Instruction and The advanced Theatre is the heroical Theatre clearly bulge outline his understanding of what epic theatre is and how it should be consumptiond in practice. In twain essays, Brecht explains what makes the epic theatre different from modern and dramatic theatre and discusses the techniques available with epic theatre and the effects they can founder on the audience. When comparing his puzzle out spawn Courage and Her Children to the two essays, it is clear that Brecht has employmentd the essays almost as guidelines to write the drama and put his theories on epic theatre into practi ce. Mother Courage and Her Children is an extremely typical Brechtian sport as it contains all the elements that Brecht wanted to include in his plays in order to present his new social class of theatre which he believed had a greater social function.One of the most obvious examples of Brechts essays being put into practice in Mother Courage and Her Children is Brechts use of narrative instead of the plot. Each scene begins with a narrative description of what will happen in that scene, and the play itself turn outs with a prologue which introduces the central character (Mother Courage) and reveals what the play is about. Despite the fact that there is a storyline zip by means of and through the play, the narrative style ties in with Brechts aim of non giving the audience the contingency to become steamyly attached to the characters. The way in which the play jumps with apiece scene keeps the storyline general and tied to a greater extent to the greater social events runnin g throughout the play rather than single, individual events in a particular scene.Having spent much of his life in Germany and experiencing two world wars, it should come as no surprise that many of Brechts plays, including Mother Courage and Her Children, feature war as the overriding theme of the play. Brecht believed that war was a continuation of business by other means.Brechts scheme on theatre meant that he did not want his audience to emotionally empathise with the characters on stage. In fact, Brecht deliberately created characters which would be content to criticism from the audience. In order to invite this active rather than passive response from the audience, to provoke a reaction, Brecht instils traits in his characters which tend to make the audience not identify with them, still criticise them. Mother Courage is portrayed as a strong, witty, formidable woman whose sole purpose is to provide a living for both herself and her children. She is a sacrificial character and her love for her children draws an audience to like her. What hinders the audience from empathising with her is her extremely contradictory temper. Whilst pulling out a knife at the Sergeant and Recruiting Officer to protect her children, Courage calls refers to herself and her children as peaceable sorts. The Sergeants cool reply of your knife shows the sort you ar further displays Courages contradictions. (Brecht 2004 715) When sending her daughter Kattrin into township with the Clerk, Courage tells her not to worry and that nothing will happen, but upon Kattrins return where she is wounded, Courage claims she should n constantly have let her go. When arguing with the Cook over a possible move to Utrecht, Courage tries to end the conversation with thats enough, wholly to continue it herself moments later. In the same scene, Courage encourages Kattrin for the two to go with the Cook to run his pothouse in Utrecht because life on the road is no sort of life, but after she sees Kattrin trying to run away she quickly turns on the Cook and questions what she and Kattrin would ever do in a pub. Of course the greatest contradiction of all throughout the play is Courages constant criticism of the war off of which she makes her living. It is this contradictory nature of Courages which constantly reminds the audience to view the character from a distance, analyse her so to speak, and not empathise with her situation. Had Mother Courage been presented as a fully-rounded character, the audience would have been tempted to empathise but her presentation as a paradoxical character helps to jolt the audience into some kind of reaction. (Leach 1994 136)Mother Courage is not the only character in the play that is given a specific trait to keep the audience empathising and becoming emotionally involved with her. Her sons Eilif and Swiss Cheese atomic number 18 both kil take in the play, and it is because of their flaws that they are killed. Her eldest son, Eilif, is strong and intelligent, but his boldness costs him his life. Her younger son, Swiss Cheese, is simple and honest, but he too is led to his death because of his stupidity. The audience are constantly reminded throughout the play by Mother Courage that her children have these traits. I have another who is foolish but honest is just one example of Brecht giving Mother Courage a specific line for two reasons both to remind the audience of the paradoxes each character possesses, to stop them from being empathised with, and to support the epic creative thinker of the play that each scene should be its own. It is frequently seen in Brechts plays for an off-stage characters absence to be explained through an on-stage characters dialogue. (ref)Robert Leach argues that for Brecht, character is only of interest in so far as it illuminates the fleeting event which provides the writer, or the actor, with a usable gesture. What Leach is utter is that for Brecht, the character is only a func tion to the greater social and economical forces which control and shape the world (within the constructed reality that are his plays), and that the actors, whilst portraying characters, can use them as tools to show the effect of these greater social implications. This can be linked to Brechts observation in the essay Theatre for Plea positive(predicate) or Theatre for Instruction that actors too refrained from going over wholly into their role in the sense that not only did actors do so to invite criticism from the audience of their characters, not only to draw attention away from the individual and place it on the social, but to alike show that the characters are simply functional to the social.another(prenominal) one of Brechts main aims was to not focus on the individual emotions of the character, but to explore and show the importance of the greater social implications. In Mother Courage and Her Children, emphasis is not put on the decisions the characters make but the social events which dictate the action of the play. War, religion and family are three main themes which run through Mother Courage and Her Children, and ultimately the fate of each character is determined by these themes. Unlike naturalistic plays where emphasis is usually placed on the individual, in Mother Courage and Her Children Brecht focuses on the relationship between the social implications and the characters of the play. All of the characters in the play are linked together by these themes, and their inability to interchange their individual (or in the case of Courage and her children, combined) situations. (Examples) Brecht has created Mother Courage as the central character of the play, but because it is not only her, but all the characters that are affected by the war, the spectators focus is neither on the central character Mother Courage nor any of the character. The spectators focus is drawn, by linking the characters and making them unable to change their situations, to the superseding social themes presented in the play.Brecht liked the notion that epic theatre allowed for jumps in clipping, and this is reflected in Mother Courage and Her Children. There is a jump in time between each scene of the play, usually a year or two, and the constant curves and jumps in the play the dialectic approach allow for Brecht to show a process and effects over time rather than one particular point of time and its individual effect on characters. (Brooker 1994 189) These jumps in time also allow the play to be epic in the sense that they allow each scene to stand independently. The jumps in time also go hand-in-hand with Brechts idea that with epic theatre, the audience should be looking with eyes on the course rather than eyes on the finish. Swiss Cheeses death and Mother Courages refusal to admit the body is his is one of the most intense moments of the entire play, but it comes as early as Scene Three. Also, the jumps in time show man as a process rather th an man as a fixed point. Rather than focusing on the central character (Mother Courage) at one particular point, Brecht draws out the play so that the audience view Courages process and development as a character subject to the social and political circumstances. The end of the play sees Mother Courage, now completely alone walk with soldiers who are singing the same song that is sung in the prologue, reminding the audience of the process that has begun from the very beginning of the play and the effect it has had throughout. The jumps in time between each scene of Mother Courage and Her Children are typical of Brechts aim to get the audience to look at the events that have taken place from a more general period of time rather than a specific point.One of the key parts of Brechts theory on theatre was that the audience should constantly know that what they are watching is not reality but a construction being presented on stage. By doing so, Brecht could show to his audience that wha t they were watching was not reality but a presented image of reality, and that could inspire change. To this end Brecht used several techniques in many of his plays (including Mother Courage and Her Children) which allowed him to reveal that the play was indeed a construction. A typical Brechtian technique used in the play is the use of stage directions at the start of each scene, which then reveal what is going to happen in that scene. By using these stage directions (either spoken aloud or displayed with placards on stage) Brecht is able to both remind his audience that what they are watching is a construction. Also, by telling the audience what will happen before it happens, Brecht can eliminate the shock factor, and so keeping the audience away from having an experience and focused on learning from the action on stage. Openly revealing that the play is not real allows Brecht to prevent any sense of emotional attachment to the piece. This can be linked to Brechts essay The Mode rn Theatre is The Epic Theatre where he says once joke is sacrificed to free discussion, and once the spectator, instead of being enabled to have an experience, is forced as it were to cast his vote then a change has been launched which goes far beyond black-tie matters and begins for the first time to affect the theatres social function.Brecht states in his essay The Modern Theatre is Epic Theatre that words, music and setting must become more independent of one another. (reference) This statement is echoed in Mother Courage and Her Children as Brecht uses not only dialogue and stage directions but songs and music in the play, and makes sure that the songs used are seen on an equal level to the other elements such as words. In fact, Scene Ten of the play is constructed entirely of only a few stage directions and song. By giving the songs such importance in the play, on the same level as stage directions and dialogue, Brecht implements his idea into practice, showing that he has u sed his two essays almost as guidelines for writing Mother Courage and Her Children. Songs are also used in the play to fit in with Brechts theory that plays should not be presented to the audience as reality, but as a construction. The direct delivery of a song from a character to the audience, thus falling out the fourth wall, is one of the ways in which the audience is reminded that they are indeed watching a play. The songs also tend to reflect the social and political themes of the play and inspire the audience to think about what they are watching.Looking at Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction and The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre in comparison with Mother Courage and Her Children, it is clear to see that the play falls into all of the categories that Brecht lists in his two essays for his theory on the function of theatre. Throughout the play the focus is taken away from the characters individual emotions and drawn to the greater social and political forces which affect the characters. The play is used as a discussion forum of sorts for some of the common Brechtian themes such as war, religion and family. The use of non-naturalist techniques such as placards and songs helps to break the illusion that the audience creates and prevents them from developing empathy for and emotional attachment to the characters. The jumps in time between each scene of the play keep the audiences focus on the process over time and not at a fixed point. Mother Courage and Her Children is without question of Brechts most typical plays and it is clear to see his essays Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction and The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre have been put into practice to create the play and inspire the audience to change, rather than experience.