Mother Courage

MOTHER COURAGE

The education system has always tried to figure out new ways of teaching certain matters of interest, like history, where there are many points to be discuss that can be left out by authors. Text books do not fill everything that should be filled, and it is impossible to do so because there are too many things to tell and not enough space to write. There is also the fact that every professor wants to give his or her own approach to the topic, and sometimes there is not one source that tells everything the way he or she wants. At that point lectures become more and more important and those are only to be complemented with text of a variety of styles. Those sources were not initially designed to fill that requirement, but with the right approach and background information those new sources can be even better than any textbook any written. These kinds of sources give a different approach to history and can be more enjoyable than boring textbooks. On the other hand, these variety of sources can also been incorrectly chosen and may difficult the learning process for students. Sometimes sources are not efficient transmitting the message that wants to be transmitted, and students can simply not understand beyond the history that is been told. For instance Mother Courage and Her Children, by Bertolt Brecht, it's a story that occurs during the Thirty Years War in Europe, and can be used to help students understand this war. Is this play a good source for understanding the Thirty Years War? Or it only stays in the basic story with minimum helpful information that would help understand this event.

The Thirty Years war was caused mainly by the protestant reformation, a process caused by the split of the Catholic Church. It was all because of the lack of tolerance and the extremist ways of thought of people. In this area for example, the play is not as deep an as informative as desired, it stays only in the basics and mentioning Catholics and Protestants as rivals but it does not go deeper. "The Catholics! Surprise attack!." "And the war is a war of religion." It does mention Religion as a point of disagreement, but it fails to really explain that this entire situation is mainly caused by religious differences. As the world is right now, with all the polemic issues started by Iraq's invasion by the United States and the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islam extremists, more described facts would be very useful. Wars have been caused by many situations, but religious wars are the most prevalent over the years. As the world is right now it is facing one of these radical situations where religion and intolerance is the justification for terrible acts, just as it was in the Thirty Years War, people is fighting and dying because of that. If this issue was addressed deeply it would help students understand what is the background for situations like the one they are facing right now. The play lacks the issue of religion and, although it states that religion was involved, a more detailed description of facts would help better analyze and understand the situation.

On the other hand, the play focuses more in the drama of common people during the war. Mother Courage is more a symbol of the people rather than a symbol of the war. It is describe during the play as a strong, fearless, tough woman, however, during all those years she was struggling with her fears and trying not to loose her children. Many situations show what she would do and how she would fight her kids to protect them. During the first scene of the play, when Mother Courage, encounters herself with the recruiting officer, she makes every possible effort not to loose her children to war even though they want to become soldiers. "Eilif: And Swiss Cheese wants to be a soldier, too." She acts as her children are not smart enough to know what is better for them, and tries as hard as she can to evade that situation. She is not going around dangerous territories because she wants to, she is doing it because is the only option that she has. More than motives of the war, the life of Mother Courage represents what the people had to do to survive during those war times. They were afraid that their children wanted to be soldiers for the wrong motives, and that they were to naÐ"Їve to understand the war. That is the big problem of young people at that time and also one big problem of the play, it is not clear which are the motives of the war. The same that is happening in the 21st century, wars that are being fought without crystal clear reasons. Although the Thirty Years War had its motives, for the reader those are very ambiguous.

Another topic that is clearly discussed in the play is the situation of people living during these war times. Starvation, which is not only because of the war but because of the situation previous to the war, is a very difficult thing for people living parallel to the conflict. As expected, common people are the biggest losers because they have to deal with a situation caused by a war they probably do not even understand. People that are not involved in a conflict have two paths to follow, the first one is to join the war and the second not to join the war but try to survive beyond the conflict. Mobilization is very limited and the few that are not part of the conflict