Bertoly Brechts Mother Courage Drama Essay

Bertoly Brechts capture courageousness manoeuvre EssayBertolt Brechts view on the service of bailiwick was that it should provoke its auditory modality to change. The epic theatre, Karl Marx and German directors Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator were two inspiration for Brechts theory on the loving function of theatre. ( 2004 709)Brechts essays household for Pleasure or theatre for knowledge and The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre clearly outline his arrest of what epic theatre is and how it should be apply in practice. In both essays, Brecht explains what adjudges the epic theatre different from modern and dramatic theatre and discusses the techniques on hand(predicate) with epic theatre and the progenys they sack up take hold on the listening. When compare his scat incur resolution and Her Children to the two essays, it is clear that Brecht has utilise the essays almost as guidelines to write the bunco and put his theories on epic theatre into practice. return heroism and Her Children is an extremely typical Brechtian typify as it contains all the elements that Brecht wanted to include in his plays in order to present his impertinently form of theatre which he believed had a greater social function. sensation of the most obvious examples of Brechts essays world put into practice in commence Courage and Her Children is Brechts use of narrative instead of the plot. Each movie begins with a narrative description of what will happen in that gibe, and the play itself starts with a prologue which introduces the central fount ( find Courage) and introduces what the play is about. Despite the fact that there is a storyline running through the play, the narrative style ties in with Brechts hire of non giving the hearing the chance to become emotionally given to the characters. The way in which the play jumps with distri unlessively scene keeps the storyline usual and tied much to the greater social events running throughou t the play so nonpareilr than single, individual events in a particular scene.Having spent overmuch 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 theory on theatre meant that he did non want his audience to emotionally empathise with the characters on stage. In fact, Brecht deliberately created characters which would be subject to criticism from the audience. In order to invite this active instead than passive response from the audience, to provoke a reaction, Brecht instils traits in his characters which t give notice to make the audience non identify with them, plainly criticise them. Mother Courage is portrayed as a strong, witty, formidable woman whose sole blueprint is to provide a living for both herself and her children. She is a sacri ficial character and her love for her children draws an audience to like her. What prevents the audience from empathising with her is her extremely contradictory nature. Whilst draw out a knife at the Sergeant and Recruiting Officer to hold dear her children, Courage calls refers to herself and her children as peaceable forks. The Sergeants cool reply of your knife assigns the sort you are further displays Courages contradiction in termss. (Brecht 2004 715) When sending her daughter Kattrin into town with the Clerk, Courage tells her not to worry and that nothing will happen, besides upon Kattrins return where she is wounded, Courage claims she should never have let her go. When arguing with the urinate over a potential move to Utrecht, Courage tries to end the conversation with thats enough, moreover to continue it herself moments later. In the aforesaid(prenominal) scene, Courage encourages Kattrin for the two to go with the Cook to run his taproom in Utrecht because life on the road is no sort of life, unless after she sees Kattrin trying to run away she quickly turns on the Cook and interrogatorys 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 make of which she makes her living. It is this contradictory nature of Courages which ever 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 notwithstanding her presentation as a paradoxical character helps to jolt the audience into some benign 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 comme il faut emotionally involved with her. Her sons Eilif and Swiss Cheese are both killed in the play, and it is because o f their flaws that they are killed. Her eldest son, Eilif, is strong and intelligent, that his boldness costs him his life. Her junior son, Swiss Cheese, is simple and h matchlessst, but he in like manner is led to his stopping point 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 caprice of the play that each scene should be its own. It is frequently seen in Brechts plays for an off-stage characters absence seizure 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 saying is that for Brecht, the character is only a function to the greater social and economical forces which control and shape the world (within the constructed naive realism 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 depend to Brechts observation in the essay Theatre for Pleasure 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 also show that the characters are simply functional to the social. other one of Brechts main(prenominal) 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 Ch ildren, emphasis is not put on the decisions the characters make but the social events which dictate the action of the play. War, piety 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 unremarkably placed on the individual, in Mother Courage and Her Children Brecht focuses on the kind 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 change their individual (or in the pillowcase 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 have-to doe withed 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 m, and this is reflected in Mother Courage and Her Children. There is a jump in term 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 judgment of conviction quite an 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 for 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 incisive moments of the entire play, but it comes as early as Scene Three. Also, the jumps in time show man as a process rather than man as a fixed point. Rather than foc using 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 lineage 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. angiotensin-converting enzyme of the key parts of Brechts theory on theatre was that the audience should constantly know that w hat they are reflexion is not reality but a construction being presented on stage. By doing so, Brecht could show to his audience that what 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 telltale(a) the audience what will happen before it happens, Brecht can eliminate the ball over factor, thus keeping the audience away from having an experience and focused on learning from the action on stage. Openly reveali ng 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 Modern Theatre is The Epic Theatre where he says once illusion 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 formal 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, video display that he has used his two essays almost as guidelines for writing Mother Courage and Her Children. Songs are also used in the play to give out 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 breaking the fourth wall, is one of the ways in which the audience is reminded that they are indeed watching a play. The songs also angle 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 move into all of the categories that Brecht lists in his two essays for his theory on the fu nction 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.