The Threepenny Opera | Themes
Betrayal and Moral Corruption
As in the ''greatest story ever told,'' the story of Jesus, the protagonist of The Threepenny Opera is betrayed by a former intimate. But there the similarity ends, or rather, diverts to mirrored opposites. Macheath is not a savior like Christ but a moral corrupter, not a paragon of virtue but a fountainhead of sin, not the archetypal human ideal but a base man of bestial instinct. In contrast to Jesus, he maims the woman with whom he has been sleeping in a stable rather than being born of a chaste woman in a stable. The wedding gown and...
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