Mother Courage: The Hole In The Cheese :: essays research papers

give Courage contains a quote that pulls the entire play together so innocuously its hard to believe that Brecht originally intended it to be so symbolic. Yet, there it is, in scene six, the chaplain rhetorically asks, "What happens to the fix when the cheese is at peace(p)?" This tonal pattern operates on the three essential layers of the play the level of the character, of the playwright (plot), and of the audience. On "face" value, this line is said about peace. The chaplain believes that the image of peace as the norm and state of war as an abnormal event is backward. He sees war as the standard occurrence (the cheese) and peace as merely an temporary incidence (the holes in the cheese). Thus peace is nothing without a setting of war upon it a hole is only a hole - it contains nothing. The shopping centre of life is war. unless the chaplains line wouldnt be as significant if it didnt have a more global meaning. In the light of the plot, "What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?" is a question that arrive Courage should ask and apply to herself. all the way the cheese is Swiss Cheese specifically, and more generally all of her children. yield Courage only thinks about a certain part of her children - their spend to her in her business. She has an odd sort of motherly care for her children abstractly, she has affection for them, tho its only abstract. The only concrete feelings she expresses toward her children is that they should listen and depend on her as long as they stay and work with her, she will keep them safe. But she cant understand that their identities are so crucially different than the tiny roles she has given up them in her life. She only sees the hole, but her children are genuine people with real ambitions. Swiss Cheese has such a desire to be clean and useful, but she only sees a simpleton. Kattrin cant voice her feelings, but its clear that shes a strong woman like her mother, and yet Mother Courage slams her (unintentionally) in every interaction they have. Kattrin is treated like an unwanted wage slave. Mother Courage cannot see the substance of her children, and when it is lost, cannot find what she thought they were because her reality was a hole. Their use to her was a hole framed in substance, and when the substance is lost, the hole is exposed to never have existed.