Luigi Pirandello 

(Italian: [luˈiːdʒi piranˈdɛllo]; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was

an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions
were his plays.[1] He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost
magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre."[2] He was an Italian
nationalist and supported Fascism in a moderate way, at one point giving his Nobel
Prize medal to the Fascist government to be melted down as part of the 1935 Oro alla
Patria [it] ("Gold to the Fatherland") campaign during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
[3] Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some
of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of
the Theatre of the Absurd.

Italian
Nationality

Alma mater University of Bonn

Genre Drama, novel, poetry

Subject Insanity, humour

Literary Italian modernism

movement

Notable works  The Late Mattia Pascal (1904)

 Six Characters in Search of an
Author (1921)
 Henry IV (1922)
 One, No One and One
Hundred Thousand (1926)

Notable Nobel Prize in Literature

awards 1934
Six Characters in Search of an Author: summary
The play begins with a group of actors rehearsing another Pirandello play, Rules of the
Game. While they are in rehearsals, six characters, wearing masks, arrive in the theatre.
Each of these masks represents a different emotion which remains fixed throughout the
play. These six figures or characters are: the Father, the Mother, the Son, the Boy, the
Sister, and the Stepdaughter.
These six characters tell the actors and director that they have their own story, but,
having created them, their author lost interest in them and they are now in search of an
author who will tell their story for them.

Throughout the course of the play, the six characters reveal their story to the actors and
director: how the Father, having had a Son with the Mother, then sent the Mother to live
with another man, with whom she had three more children: the Stepdaughter, the Boy,
and the Sister. Each character has a fixed emotion, which is embodied by the mask they
wear. The Father’s emotion is Remorse: painful regret at having sent his wife, the
Mother, away.

One particular scene from their past involves a hat shop, where the Stepdaughter went
to work; really, it was a brothel. The Mother, needing money, went to work there, too,
and walked in on the Father – who had visited the brothel in need of some female
company – when he was about to have sex with the Stepdaughter (not knowing who she
was). This scene of the characters’ past is dramatised in the second act of Six Characters
in Search of an Author, but just as they are about to act out the scene, the real-life
brothel madam, Madame Pace, turns up in the theatre!

When the actors try to replicate what the Father and Stepdaughter had re-enacted,
arguments soon break out about how the scene should be played. A long philosophical
discussion ensues, chiefly between the Father and the director of the play. The Father,
wearing his mask of remorse, has a fixed emotion and cannot change; the director, too,
is living in the deluded view that his ‘reality’ is more real than the Father’s.

At the end of the play, while attempting to enact another scene from the lives of the Six
Characters, the Sister drowns herself and the little Boy shoots himself. The actors are
convinced it is all illusion, but the Father tells them it is real. Meanwhile, the
Stepdaughter leaves the theatre itself – in many productions, not just the theatre that is
being ‘staged’ in front of the audience, but the auditorium of the real theatre in which
the real audience sits. Her laughter can be heard as she exits the building.

Where has she gone? Out into the ‘real’ world? And what makes it ‘real’?

Six Characters in Search of an Author: analysis

Six Characters in Search of an Author invites us to ask a number of key questions, not
just about the theatre, but about life itself. It

simply  uses the theatre as a powerful, visual, tangible metaphor and vehicle for
these questions. What is reality? How can we know reality from illusion? What is
‘authentic’ emotion? Isn’t everything, to an extent, a performance, an illusion, an
artifice? How ‘fixed’ are we as people, as personalities?

Pirandello was influenced by a number of Italian theatrical models for Six Characters in

Search of an Author. The idea of the Six Characters wearing masks which embody their
emotions, for instance, harks back to the Commedia dell’Arte tradition in Italian theatre,
where figures such as Harlequin and Scaramouche represent particular personalities.
But Pirandello was writing in the wake of Freud’s ideas about psychoanalysis, too, and
the discussions between the ‘real’ characters (the director, the actors) and the ‘fictional’
Six Characters raise a number of questions about human personality which Pirandello
encourages his audience to ponder.

Of course, we should be aware of the artifice of the whole thing: another long-standing
tradition which Six Characters in Search of an Author harks back to is the play-within-
a-play concept. The ‘real’ characters, we know as we sit watching everything unfold from
the auditorium, are as fictional as the Six Characters: the ‘actors’ are actually actors
playing ‘actors’. But at the same time, Pirandello invites us to treat the rehearsal of their
play as real: they are, after all, rehearsing a genuine Pirandello play, called Rules of the
Game, and it is only when the Six Characters show up that we are really invited to snap
out of our illusions and recall that the whole thing, like all theatre, is make-believe.

As Michael Patterson observes in his The Oxford Guide to Plays (Oxford Quick

Reference) , even the title of Pirandello’s play is a piece of sleight-of-hand: these

‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ have already found their author – he’s the one
who created them – and they already have their story. What they need, however, is
someone to realise that story for them on the stage. They are, after all, really six
characters in search of a director. But when they find their Director – and the Father is
convinced the Director is the one who can bring their story to life – this Director finds
his whole understanding of theatre thrown into doubt as the Six Characters force him to
confront some difficult questions.

For instance, to whom does a story or a scene ‘belong’? The author of the play? The
director who brings it to life on the stage? The actors who ‘interpret’ the part? Or, if the
play is based on real-life events, does it truly belong to the people who lived through the
events the play dramatises?

This point comes home during the scene in the ‘hat shop’, where the actors are tasked
with acting out the scene in which the Mother discovers the Father and Stepdaughter
about to be … caught in an intimate embrace. The Stepdaughter, who has ‘lived’ the
reality of her character, tells the actors and director that the actor playing the Father
cannot possibly bring to life the true anguish the Father felt when he found himself in
the arms of a woman who, when she had been a little girl, he had doted on as his own.

Pirandello was interested in the theories of Stanislavsky, whose method of psychological

immersion (similar to, but distinct from, so-called ‘method acting’) was becoming
popular in Europe at the time (Stanislavsky had been involved in some of Chekhov’s
productions at the end of the nineteenth century). Actors should spend a long time
‘becoming’ the part they are playing, through training their brains in certain ways of
thinking and responding. These theories clearly inform Six Characters in Search of an
Author.

2.The cherry orchard

Brief Biography of Anton Chekhov

  Born in 1860 in a port town in the south of Russia, Anton Chekhov grew up in a household ruled by an
abusive father who plunged the family into bankruptcy—an imposing figure whose cruelty would inspire
many of Chekhov’s dramatic works and short fictions. Chekhov moved to Moscow in 1879 to attend
medical school, knowing he had to support his large and struggling family—in order to make ends meet
while he studied, he wrote and published satirical short stories and sketches. Chekhov would go on to
make more money as a writer than a doctor, though he considered himself a physician first for much of
his life. Chekhov suffered from poor health in the mid-1880s, but told very few people of his struggles
with tuberculosis; while travelling to the Ukraine for his health in the late 1880s, he was commissioned to
write a play, and his literary career took off in earnest. Chekhov enjoyed great success for many years. As
his health continued to deteriorate throughout the late 1890s, Chekhov purchased a country estate in
Yalta, where he composed some of his most famous works, including Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard,
and the short story “The Lady with the Dog.” Chekhov died due to complications from tuberculosis in
July of 1904, just six months after the Moscow Art Theater premiere of The Cherry Orchard; the play
was his final work.

Summary
This Play has been written by the famous Russian Playwright Anton Chekhov. The
Cherry Orchard is a play which deals with the lives of people living in Russia. The
main theme of the play is preoccupied with Liberation of the serfs. The activity covers
the period of five or a half year.The opening of the play is set in the month of May, in
the Cherry Orchard ; companions, neighbors, and workers are getting ready for the
hotly anticipated return of Madame Ranevsky, the owner of the house, and her
daughter Anya. Madame Ranevsky has two girls. She had abandoned this Cherry
Orchard five years ago after the death of her husband and son. She is currently coming
back from France, where her oppressive sweetheart had looted and deserted her. She
has gathered incredible obligations during her stay at France. Lopakhin is her
neighbor who starts by recounting to the tale of his own prosperity: brought into the
world a serf, he has figured out how to make himself a fortune. Another previous serf,
Firs, prepares the house during Lopakhin’s addresses. Firs have kept up a similar post,
in spite of the Liberation. Dunyasha, the servant, admits a potential bonding between
her and Ephikhodof, a young clerk. At last, Madame Ranevsky returns. Her loved
ones are thrilled to see her. Act I presents numerous subplots: an affair between
Trophimof, who was the tutor of the dead son of Madame Ranevsky  and Anya,
another affair between her sister Barbara and the self made man Lopakhin, an
affection triangle between Dunyasha, Yasha who is another servant of Madame
Ranevsky and Ephikhodof, the obligation of the neighbor Pishtchik, the class battles
of Lopakhin and Firs, the seclusion of Charlotte, and so forth. The principle interest of
the play, be that as it may, depends on Madame Ranevsky’s obligation. Neither she
nor Gayef her brother has any money or material prosperity to pay the home loan. If
the loan will not be paid on time the state will be sold in August.
Lopakhin recommends that Madame Ranevsky should construct manors on the
bequest. She can cut the Cherry Orchard and rent the left plot to pay the home loan.
Madame Ranevsky and Gayef are not willing to cut the Cherry Orchard, and want to
work something out all alone. In any case, as spring goes into summer, Madame
Ranevsky just gets herself more in the debt, with not a single answer to be found.
Abnormal sentiments among Anya and Trophimof and Dunyasha and Yasha proceed,
while nothing constructive comes out of the affairs of  Lopakhin and Barbara and
Dunyasha and Ephikhodof. Firs’ wellbeing is declining. Madame Ranevsky is
accepting letters from her sweetheart, and Gayef starts to think about a vocation at a
bank. Pishtchik takes out credits from Madame Ranevsky, whose possess reserves are
lessening ceaselessly to nothing.

The evening of the closeout, no arrangement has shown up. Madame Ranevsky holds
a ball. Charlotte who is Anya’s governess is busy in the arrangements of the party,
visitors and workers come to attend them. Madame Ranevsky and Trophimof have a
genuine discussion about Madame Ranevsky’s luxury; in addition to the fact that she
continues to add to obligations, however she is presently thinking about going back to
her oppressive darling in France. Madame Ranevsky is apprehensive about the result
of the auction; she is  yet thinking for a supernatural occurrence.

Finally Gayef and Lopakhin return from the auction: Lopakhin has purchased the
cherry plantation. Barbara is angry, and Madame Ranevsky is crushed. Lopakhin, be
that as it may, can’t conceal his joy: he has purchased the home where his family lived
as serfs. Amusingly, he urges the gathering to proceed, despite the fact that the hosts
are no longer in the disposition to celebrate.

Act IV shows Madame Ranevsky leaving the cherry plantation once and for all.
Lopakhin has purchased champagne, however nobody aside from the snobbish Yasha
will drink it. Lopakhin and Trophimof share a delicate goodbye: Trophimof will come
back to the college. Charlotte is tormented to find that she never again has any
position; Ephikhodof has another situation with Lopakhin. Pishtchik has options left
to take care of a portion of his obligations. Gayef finds a suitable job at a bank,
Barbara a situation as a maid, and Yasha will remain on with Madame Ranevsky, who
is coming back to France. It seems that Firs has been sent for treatment at a clinic.
Lopakhin botches his last opportunity with Barbara, and Dunyasha cries that Yasha is
leaving.

Madame Ranevsky and Gayef share a nostalgic minute alone before leaving on a
moderately idealistic note. In the last minute, we hear sounds of chopping down the
plantation, and Firs is still present in the house, overlooked, secured in the house. He
rests to rest and apparently bites the dust to meet his death.

Critical Analysis
Serfs were liberated in 1861 in Russia. It brought a justice to serfs and they started
working for their own development. Their occurred a social change by shifting of
powers from aristocracy to poor class. The characters are sympathetic in almost all the
plays of Anton Chekhov. Characters like Madame Ranevsky represent the upper strata
of the society. Although she understands that she has no money left to pay the home
loan yet she lives a lavish life. It shows her inactivity to do any work. She has been to
this life and now she finds herself unable to face the challenges of the life. In this
respect Chekhov has portrayed a sense of realism in this play.

3.The balcony

Jean Genet
Jean Genet (French: [ʒɑ̃ ʒənɛ]; 19 December 1910 – 15 April 1986) was a French novelist,
playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty
criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels The
Thief's Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers and the plays The Balcony, The Maids and The Screens.
[1]

The Balcony
Plot Summary
The Balcony by French playwright Jean Genet is set in a high-end brothel in the middle of an
unidentified city going through a revolution. The brothel functions as a microcosm of the established
government under threat just outside its walls. The play was well received by critics, with biographer
Edmund White claiming that Genet re-invented modern theatre and critic Martin Esslin calling the
piece “one of the masterpieces of our time.”
The play opens inside The Grand Balcony, a brothel in which customers may dress up to portray
their fantasies. Irma, the owner, coordinates the busy schedule as men masquerade as a bishop,
judge, and a general. Meanwhile, the streets outside are in the midst of open warfare as rebels claim
more of the city. The only remaining protection of the brothel is George, the Chief of Police and
Irma’s lover.
Carmen, a former whore who is now a bookkeeper for the brothel, confesses to Irma that she misses
being a whore. She’s also upset that Irma doesn’t allow the women to talk about their jobs. Irma is
distracted by the absence of George but agrees that Carmen can play a pivotal role in an upcoming
appointment. Irma asks Carmen about the other girls at the brothel, especially Chantal who has
joined the rebellion. George shows up claiming that the Royal Palace has been surrounded and that
the Queen is hiding. More important to him, however, is the question of whether or not Irma’s clients
ever fantasize being him, believing that imitation will give him immortality. Her answer is no, which
upsets George and convinces him to be more ruthless and win the hearts and minds of people like
her clients.
Outside the brothel, Chantal expresses her love for a plumber, Roger, among the rebels. The
rebellion has chosen her as a feminine symbol of the cause. Chantal is honored and willing to take
the position, but Roger is more reluctant.
Back in the brothel, the streets outside are more chaotic. The enigmatic Envoy of the Queen comes
to the building, stressing that most in the palace are dead or injured, including the Queen. He wants
Irma to stand in as the Queen so the populace will remain loyal and calm. George, reluctant to even
pretend to appear weaker than Irma, doesn’t approve of the idea. Irma decides to do it.
Irma makes an appearance on the brothel’s balcony accompanied by George and the men playing a
bishop, judge, and general. Chantal appears as well, but is shot by an assassin.
For posterity, the clients playing the bishop, judge, and general pose for photographs and answer
questions on their official decisions about the current crisis. Irma walks in, still playing the Queen,
and continues the masquerade. Outside, the fighting worsens.
Carmen informs them that a client has come and wants to act as Chief of Police. George is ecstatic.
The client is Roger, who puts on the costume and fulfills his fantasy. When he is finished, he
castrates himself rather than leaving. George is satisfied that somebody has finally played him and
resolves to spend the rest of his life in the mausoleum, locking himself inside. Irma dismisses the
men playing the bishop, judge, and general and is left alone as gunfire is heard outside.
The Balcony demonstrates what a fine line exists between dreams and reality. Irma’s house of
illusions gives people who are bored with their daily lives the opportunity to fantasize about being
other people. However, when the clients are forced to live out the roles they fantasize about, they
realize that dreams are not always what they’re cracked up to be. Likewise, Roger is a rebel who
wants real change in government, but when the rebellion wants to take Chantal away from him so
she can be the symbol of the cause, he would rather keep her to himself.
The play also addresses the role that illusion plays in the breakdown of society. The fraudulent
depictions of the church, judicial system, military, and royal positions in the story represent how
unjust political and social structures can be in society, and how easily they are manipulated or even
erased. The agendas of the characters in the play are not necessarily the same as the expectations
for their roles, real or not.
The play reflects Genet’s interest in sexuality, rebellion, and politics. Genet himself was born the son
of a prostitute, who abandoned him as a baby. He spent his youth in foster care. As a boy, his foster
mother caught him stealing out of her purse and she called him a thief, an identity he maintained for
the rest of his youth. By his teenage years, he was a juvenile delinquent and he spent the next
decade wandering between countries during WWII as a prostitute, a pimp, and a smuggler. His
lifestyle eventually landed him in jail, where he began his career as a writer.
The Little Clay Cart Summary

T he Little Clay Cart is a Sanskrit play about a Brahman named Chrudatta

who has given all his wealth to those in need.
 The married Chrudatta falls in love with Vasantasen, a courtesan, and the
two begin an affair.

 The jealous Samsthnaka tries to kill Vasantasen and blames the crime on
Chrudatta, who is sentenced to death.

 Vasantasen reappears in time to save Chrudatta, whose wealth and status

are returned by Aryaka, the new king.

 Chrudatta is a Brahman who has impoverished himself by spending his

substance on the public welfare and in helping individuals who have
sought his aid. Although dwelling in poverty in a broken-down house,
he still enjoys a fine reputation in Ujjayini as an honest and upright
man of rare wisdom. This reputation eases somewhat the fact that he
has been deserted by most of his friends and is embarrassed by his
lack of wealth.
 Although married happily and the proud father of a small son,
Rohasena, Chrudatta is enamored of Vasantasen, a courtesan of great
wealth and reputation who, having seen him at a temple, is also in
love with him. One evening, as Chrudatta and his friend Maitreya sit
discussing Chrudatta’s misfortunes and the efficacy of devotion to the
gods, Vasantasen finds herself pursued by Samsthnaka, a half-mad
brother-in-law of King Plaka, and one of his henchmen. The men
threaten to do violence to Vasantasen, but she escapes from them in
the darkness and finds safety in the house of Chrudatta, where a
meeting between the two increases the love they already feel for each
other. Before she leaves to return to her own palace, the courtesan
entrusts a casket of jewelry to Chrudatta as an excuse to see him
again.
 During the night a thief, Sarvilaka, enters Chrudatta’s house and steals
the jewelry to buy his love, Madanik, who is Vasantasen’s slave and
confidant. The courtesan accepts the jewels and frees Madanik to
marry Sarvilaka, intending to see that Chrudatta should learn that the
jewels have been recovered. In the meantime, Chrudatta sends a rare
pearl necklace of his wife’s to Vasantasen to recompense the
courtesan for the loss of her less valuable jewels. His friend Maitreya,
fearing that Vasantasen’s attentions can bring only bad luck and
 disaster, cautions Chrudatta against doing so. Maitreya, knowing
courtesans, believes that Vasantasen is merely scheming to take from
Chrudatta the few possessions he still has.
 After leaving Vasantasen’s palace with his newly freed bride, Sarvilaka
learns that his friend Prince Aryaka has been arrested by King Plaka
and placed in a dungeon. The king, neither a popular nor a just
monarch, fears that the people might rise up, as a soothsayer has
predicted, to place Prince Aryaka on the throne. After Sarvilaka
succeeds in freeing the prince from prison, Aryaka seeks help from
Chrudatta, who aids him in escaping the pursuing guards.
 Vasantasen, having become Chrudatta’s mistress, meets his small son
and gives him some jewels with which to purchase a golden toy cart to
replace the unsatisfactory clay cart Chrudatta had been able to afford.
She makes arrangements to meet Chrudatta in Pushpakarandaka Park,
outside the city, for a day’s outing, but by mistake she enters the
wrong vehicle and finds herself in the gharry belonging to
Samsthnaka, who still pursues her and is madly jealous of the love
and favors she bestows freely upon Chrudatta. When Vasantasen
arrives at the park, she is discovered in the gharry by Samsthnaka,
who at first is overjoyed at seeing her because he thinks she has come
to him voluntarily. When she spurns him and declares her love for
Chrudatta, Samsthnaka tries to make his henchmen kill her, but they
refuse. Samsthnaka sends his followers away and chokes her himself.
Believing her dead, he hides the body under a pile of leaves. Then,
hoping to escape the penalty for his crime, Samsthnaka decides to go
to a court and accuse Chrudatta of murdering Vasantasen.
 When Samsthnaka first appears at the court, the judges, who know
him to be somewhat mad, refuse to see him or take him seriously, but
when he threatens to go to King Plaka, the judges become frightened
and send for Chrudatta. Falsely accused, Chrudatta proclaims his
innocence, but circumstances are against him. He admits having been
in the park, and the jewels of Vasantasen are found at his home,
offering a motive for the poverty-stricken man to have killed her. The
judges, in spite of Chrudatta’s previous reputation, find him guilty.
Although Chrudatta’s status as a Brahman exempts him from the
death penalty for any crime, King Plaka orders Chrudatta put to death.
No one knows that the body identified as Vasantasen’s was actually
that of another woman or that Vasantasen is not dead; befriended by
a Buddhist monk, she is recovering near the park from Samsthnaka’s
attack.
 Chrudatta is taken through the city by two executioners, who stop
several times to announce the name of the condemned man and the
nature of his crime. Although the people of the city love Chrudatta,
they dare not intervene on his behalf, even though he steadfastly
 maintains his innocence. Samsthnaka’s slave tries to tell that his
master is really the one who committed the crime, but no one believes
him, and so Chrudatta and his executioners, accompanied by a crowd,
continue on their way to the place of execution, a cemetery south of
the city.
 The executioners, thinking to be merciful, offer to decapitate
Chrudatta, but a miracle prevents their sword from touching him, and
so they prepare the victim for the slow, agonizing death by
impalement on a pike. Fortunately, Vasantasen, seeing the excited
crowd as she makes her way back to the city, intervenes in time to
save Chrudatta. When she tells who really attacked her, Samsthnaka
is arrested. The excitement does not end with that, however, for word
comes that Chrudatta’s wife, believing herself a widow, is about to cast
herself upon a funeral pyre. Chrudatta reaches her in time to prevent
her death, and she and Vasantasen meet and accept each other. Word
comes, too, that Prince Aryaka has deposed King Plaka and is now
king. One of his first deeds is to restore Chrudatta’s fortune and make
him an important official of the court. Chrudatta, still a man of
conscience and charity, forgives Samsthnaka for his villainy and
causes him to be set free.
Conclusion

What seems very evident from a comparison of the ritual and believed status and the
Actual and evident

status of the above stated examples is that in all the cases the Brāhmaṇs, the
courtesan, the judge, the

Cānḍāla and all others virtue, honesty, and good moral character seem to be prized
over birth, generally

evident social position and economic position. The importance of birth does assert it
self in a lot of ways in

the drama but in the end it seems these conventions were largely looked at as
theoretical and in reality like

any other nicely ending drama or play with a message that character was seen as most
important.
The drama in all represents true cosmopolitan life with all its flavours. In an attempt
to look at the

picture of social hierarchies within it also we get a mixed response, there are places
where it follows the

convention yet there are also places where it totally deviates. We would like to believe
that picture so

presented represents the common mans tale and true aspects of the society but as I
said it is only possible for

us to contemplate and draw inferences as we see what the author tries to show us.

Mother Courage and Her Children

BERTOLT BRECHT

The play ''Mother Courage and her children'' is written in 12 scenes or part
that are tagged with numbers but loosely connected in between. The plot is
connected to a novel by Hans Jacob Grimmelshausen "Der abenteuerliche
Simplicissimus'' in which 30 years long war, that started in the 17th century,
between Protestants and Catholics was described.

The play was written in 1939 and performed 1941 in Zurich. It isn't a typical play
because it doesn't have a dramatic plot or scene structure and through songs we get to
know the characters and the situation in the play.

We can see the tragic destiny of a mother and her daughter, different opinions on how
war can be useful and through the whole play the writer is trying to raise the awareness
of the readers about the number of war victims and that war should be despised because
it cannot solve any problem.

Time: 30 years war (1624 -1636)

Place: Europe (mostly cities of todays Germany)

Book Summary

The plot is set in the time of the 20 years old war between 1624 and 1636. Anna
Fierling, who is called Mother Courage, and her children travel with the Sweden army
during the war and they run a cafeteria. Anna got the nickname Mother Courage
because she does not give up on the journey of following thearmy with her cafeteria and
her children during the war.

She has a daughter and two sons and all of them have different fathers and different
characters. Her voiceless daughter Kattrin Haupt and sons Swiss Cheese and Eilif
accompany their mother and the army.

The first scenes happen in the spring of 1624, a little before the attack of general
Oyenstjern to Poland. In the first scene her sons are persuaded to join the army. But
Mother Courage is strongly against her sons joining the army. She sees the war as a
useful source of income but does not want her sons in the army.

When Mother Courage get into marketing business and sells the commander a silver
buckle she forgets her kids and her son Eliff is taken to the army.

In the second scene the plot is set in Poland from 1625 to 1626. The son of Mother
Courage Eliff is honored in the army because he managed to confiscate the cattle of the
enemies. During the honoring mother and son meet again and while celebrating his glory
they dance until dawn.

Soon trouble began to pile up for this family. Mother Courage and her children fall into
the hands of the enemies and get trapped with a prostitute Yvette Poitier.

Mother Courage tries to run away with the help of the cook who is very fond of Yvette.
She dresses as a chaplain and her daughter takes Yvettes clothes. Her son does not want
to be a traitor so he tries to save the cash register but gets caught and sentenced to
death.

When Mother Courage find out about it she tries to buy him and bargains with the
commander about the price while Yvette tries to seduce him and get him to do the same
thing.

Despite all of the effort the son is executed and his execution is announced with a drum
sound. His death body is shown to Mother Courage and his sister but they pretend notto
know him so they wouldn't get discovered.
The conformist philosophy of Mother Courage is best described in the fourth scene were
Mother Courage meets a young soldier fighting injustice.

Mother Courage keeps on following the army but after the army of general Tilly wins
near Magdeburg and a world peace is near Mother Courage is concerned will her
incomes decrease with the end of war. The captain calms her down saying that the war
is not going to end because the Pope and kings always call to new wars and a time when
a constant peace is possible is impossible.

Mother Courage tries to get a new delivery of merchandise and sends Kattrin to get it.
She gets attacked by soldiers and they scar her face. Her face is permanently ruined and
including the fact that she got pregnant when she was a child her chances to get married
are small.

Mother Courage lost her children in the war, both sons and Kattrin who was sentenced
to this miserable life.

The war is ending and the cook who was courting to Mother Courage is back, Yvette is
married to a commander and Eiliff is caught and sentenced to death.

A new war starts and Mother Courage decides to go with the army again. The cook and
her daughter go after her. After some time the cook wants to settle down because he
gets tired of living out of a suitcase. His wish is to marry Mother Courage but she turns
him down because of her daughter Kattrin who is weak and psychically broken. Despite
her condition Kattrin still pushes the cafeteria and travels with the army.

In front of the city Halle the army is prepared for a night attack. Kattrin climbs to the
roof of a village building and decided to warn the villagers about the attack with a drum.
The soldiers threaten her to quiet down but she does not stop with the drumming until
they shoot her.

In the penultimate part Mother Courage cries for her daughter while singing her sad
lullabies. She keeps on following the army.

In the last scene Mother Courage pushes the cafeteria on her own with her daughters
dead body.

CONCLUSION
Brecht succeeds in putting his vision forward to the readers. The play engages the
audience into a journey to a

war-hungry world thereby stimulates their thinking which has been disrupted by the
ideology concocted by

those at power. It is the capitalist doctrine that shatters the smoothness of the families
and subverts the

objectives of the religion thereby blocks the reasoning of the masses from making the
rational decisions on their

own. What makes this play ahistorical is it’s castigating the economic enterprise of
war. Leaving the play open-

ended since the narrative doesn’t voice the end of the war, itself sums up the fact the
situation of the world today

is in no way different from that of the past. If Herbert Blau takes “drama as an
impulse of suffering” then

Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children passes this criterion more pathetically (1).
The world is still haunted

by the oppression stemming from the capitalism and the wars due to which the rich
are getting richer and poor

poorer.