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

Mother Courage contains a quote that pulls the entire play together so innocuously its hard to conceptualize that Brecht originally intended it to be so symbolic. Yet, there it is, in place setting six, the chaplain rhetorically asks, "What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?" This pargonntage operates on the one-third essential layers of the play the level of the character, of the playwright (plot), and of the audience. On "face" value, this task 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 take hold ofs war as the warning occurrence (the cheese) and peace as merely an interim incidence (the holes in the cheese). Thus peace is nothing without a backdrop of war upon it a hole is totally a hole - it contains nothing. The substance of life is war.But the chaplains line wouldnt be as significant if it didnt have a more spheric meaning. In the light of the plot, &qu otWhat happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?" is a psyche that Mother Courage should ask and apply to herself. Clearly the cheese is Swiss quit specifically, and more generally all of her children. Mother Courage scarcely thinks about a certain part of her children - their use to her in her business. She has an comical sort of motherly care for her children abstractly, she has affection for them, but its further abstract. The provided 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 them in her life. She only sees the hole, but her children are real people with real ambitions. Swiss Cheese has such a desire to be honest and useful, but she only sees a simpleton. Kattrin cant voice her feelings, but its clear that shes a strong fair sex like her moth er, and yet Mother Courage slams her (unintentionally) in every fundamental 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 neer have existed.