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Courage Mother and her Children critique

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Courage Mother and her Children critique
“Mother Courage and Her Children” by Bertolt Brecht took place during the 30 Years’ War in Europe. The whole play revolved around the survival of a lower class family, trying to live through the harsh war with their canteen wagon business. Each scene in the play contained the factors of religious, honesty, war, loyalty, and family.
The theme of “Mother Courage and Her Children” was maternity, due to the fact that Mother Courage’s sense of coldhearted business caused her become unable to protect her children, which led to their deaths, leaving her all alone in the end. Mother Courage was always doing business while each of her children died during the play. This shows that she was more interested in her business and money than her own children, and an example of this can be seen when her thirst for money had caused Swiss to die because she took too long to decide whether or not to trade her money in for her son’s life.
Mother Courage was the protagonist in the play, while the war was the antagonist. The war caused Mother Courage to base her living on it. Due to the fact that they were living during a war, this caused Mother Courage to be so focused on making money, that she ended up neglecting her children. It also caused her to be unable to watch her daughter get married, since Kattrin could only get married when peace returned and the war ended. War is also the antagonist, due to the fact that is also caused Mother Courage to lose her sons as well.
The play was a tragedy because in it, Mother Courage’s children all perished, and she was left all alone in the end. In the play, Bretch assigned each of Mother Courage’s children with a “tragic flaw” as a result of her failure to learn to choose family over business. The tragedies that Mother Courage’s children suffered throughout the play were Swiss, with honesty, Eilif, with arrogance, and Kattrin, with pity. Mother Courage had to go through suffering of the death of each of her children one by one and was

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