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Mother Courage and Her Children Study Guide

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by Bertolt Brecht
About 51 pages (15,231 words)
Mother Courage and Her Children Summary

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Critical Essay #3

In this 1963 essay, Brustein examines Brecht's political motivations in creating Mother Courage and Her Children. Finding the play to be a prime example of the playwright's pacifist views, the critic asserts that the work is a "Marxist indictment of the economic motives behind international aggression."

Brecht's masterly chronicle of the Thirty Years War, Mother Courage and Her Children, is often interpreted as a straightforward pacifist document, but it is not simply that. It is also a relentless Marxist indictment of the economic motives behind international aggression. If property is theft in The Threepenny Opera, it is rape, pillage, and murder in Mother Courage—war, in short, is an extension not of diplomacy but of free enterprise. As for the financier, he is no longer a gangster, like Macheath. He is now a cynical warlord—like the Swedish.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 1,236 words. This study guide contains 15,231 words (approx. 51 pages at 300 words per page).

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Mother Courage and Her Children from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.



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