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Analysis Of Bertolt Brecht's 'Mother Courage'

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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage’ is different to most plays from the 1940s due to the playwright’s innovative form of theatre - Epic Theatre. This play, which is indirectly about the World War II, contains music and songs , which was Brecht’s way to break the seriousness in story of ‘Mother Courage’ and to allow the audience to reflect upon her decisions. In addition, the songs are used to draw the audience’s attention to the corruption of the capitalist system. This essay will explore the three main songs which are of importance to these main ideas which Brecht imposes.

Epic theatre was created by Brecht, used to set the audience apart from the characters and get them to critically view the action on stage instead of getting emotionally involved with the characters, which is important in the understanding of Brecht’s criticism of capitalism. The 11 songs in ‘Mother Courage’ are used as a method of the ‘v-effect’ or the ‘alienation effect’. The v-effect is one of the most important techniques to perform epic theatre, trying to ‘break the fourth wall’ allowing the audience to analyse the characters and the importance of specific scenes, pushing the audience to comment on certain incidents and themes. With the exception of scene 5 and 11, every scene contains a song; the majority of the characters are each given an individual song, which are used to reveal something about the characters past and are used to explain forthcoming action. However, Brecht also uses the songs to

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