Resumo de Mother Courage And Her Children

Mother Courage and her Children is a play about the dreadful toll war takes on its people, and how any citizen who profits from the war is also complicit in it. Mother Courage?s commercial greed and profiteering makes her lose everything to the war as she becomes more caught in its clutches. She loses her children one by one and is left with nothing but the merchandise she sells, a slave to the war machine that she helped to build.

The play begins during the Thirty Year?s War in 1624. The Swedish Army is recruiting for their war in Poland. Mother Courage profits by selling provisions to the soldiers. She follows the war with her wagon and her children. A recruiting officer and sergeant are trying to find new men to enlist. They see Mother Courage?s son Eilif, and try to tempt him into the army. Mother Courage runs them off, but as the Sergeant pretends to be interested in buying some of her merchandise, she becomes so preoccupied with buying and selling that the Recruiting Officer is left to take her son away to the war.

Next we see Mother Courage in Poland, following the wake of the war with her younger son, Swiss Cheese and her mute daughter Kattrin. She soon encounters her son, the soldier Eilif. He is receiving a medal for killing some peasants and stealing their cattle. She finally talks to her son and reproaches him for killing the peasants.

Three years later, Mother Courage is still following the regiment. The Catholic Army attacks and wins the battle forcing her to switch sides and pretend that she is a Catholic and not a Protestant. A few days later she leaves to conduct business and entrusts her son, Swiss Cheese with her money box. Swiss Cheese is caught by Catholic Spies and he is arrested as a traitor. Mother Courage returns and has to deny knowing her son when she sees him taken away. However, she gets her friend Yvette, a former prostitute who is now married to a Colonel, to bribe the soldiers for Swiss Cheese?s life. However, Mother Courage tries to bargain over the price for too long and they execute her son. When they bring his body to her, she still denies that he is her son.

Mother Courage?s supplies are low and the soldiers take everything for very little. She gets her daughter, Kattrin to go to town to get more supplies. Kattrin returns with the provisions, but she has been attacked on her way home and has a dreadful scar on her face.

Peace breaks out, and Mother Courage now finds herself financially ruined. However, she?s glad she will see her son Eilif again. Eilif soon appears, fortunately not in his mother?s presence, in chains. Apparently, as he used to do during the war, he killed some more peasants in order to take their cattle, but because it was during peacetime, he was arrested. The chaplain goes off with him to be with him during his execution. Mother Courage comes back with the news that war has been declared again. The chaplain does not tell Mother Courage about her son?s death.

Two years later Mother Courage has gone off to buy supplies and leaves Kattrin with some peasants and their farmhouse. Some soldiers come and seize the peasants in the farmhouse as well as Kattrin. They force them to keep quiet so that they can attack the town below. Kattrin takes a drum onto the roof and begins to beat the drum, she pulls the ladder up with her to prevent the others from stopping her. The drumming brings back the soldiers, they try to tempt her to stop, but she refuses. Kattrin saves the town, but not before the soldiers have shot her dead.

Mother Courage returns to find her last child a victim of the war. She decides to continue following the war, selling provisions to the soldiers.

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