Throughout the play the title character, Mother Courage, is presented to us in such a way that the reader is usually left not knowing how to feel. We have with two choices. On the one hand she can be a money grubbing, self concerned woman who only cares about herself and those directly related to her money. On the other hand she can be considerate and caring mother who only wants to protect her children. It’s an issue the reader wrestles with many times over the course of the play.

If you take everything at face value it seems that all Mother Courage is driven by is profit. But then one has to think . . . What’s is her motive? Is it her children? Are we completely misinterpreting Mother Courage’s intentions? Consider this: Mother Courage throughout the war does what she can to keep her d

Kattrin's body is kept onstage in the last scene because it represents the death of selflessness. Helping others does not pay; by keeping the body onstage, Brecht is showing the audience that only people like Mother Courage can survive in the world. By making us despise Mother Courage, Brecht is trying to get his audience to realize that the world in which we live needs to be changed. Kattrin represents an alternative and idealized world that cannot yet exist in our own world.

Mother Courage looses all three of her children at the end of the play. As each dies she just seems to pick up and move on, with a brief moment of sorrow. This is a characteristic that adds to the readers contempt for her, and rightly so. Wouldn’t you think the death of a child would affect a mother to the point of agony? But it doesn’t seem to reach Mother Courage on this level. Why is it, that in spite of losing all her children, Mother Courage fails to see the light?

She conducts business even at the end, paying for Kattrin's burial. Basically, she has learned nothing, saying, "I must get back into business." Although Brecht wants us to condemn her for her sentiments at the end, it is difficult to do so. Part of the problem is that we are not presented with a better alternative. Had she not conducted business at each moment when her children were killed, then she would not have been able to feed her re

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