Pardon the crudeness of this language, but I think Mother Courage and her Children was witty as hell. Being a male, I’m naturally attracted to war literature, which probably has something to do with my extremely favorable opinion (but the same can be said about the other works we read this year and how a woman would naturally favor them). I like the cart as a metaphor (that war is a weight, a family works as a unity, et cetera), and the intermittent comedy is a great rhetorical device, too; for example, I love when the mother calls Kattrin stupid and the name Swiss Cheese is hilarious in itself. The play is extremely light at points and then quickly dark; there is an easy transition, for example, between moments when the mother is yelling at Katrin about adoring herself in army gear and then the actual, imminent invasion of the Catholics. That the mother is the only one pulling the cart---that image---is particularly powerful. I don’t know if the true statement of this play is that the mother ends up bearing all the load of war, but the play accomplishes that almost perfectly. The songs about fraternization and absconding with soldiers early on were great. The play is, in my opinion, a bit long-winded. This, however, is about the 30 years war, so a 30 page or so adaptation or encapsulation can be forgiven. I want to say something about religion in this play, and that would possibly be that the self-ashing of the mother, Swiss Cheese, and Kattrin to make themselves Catholic is a statement about fate when it suits a purpose.
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