Mother Courage and Her Children is one of the most famous antiwar dramas in all literature. In 1941, when the play was first performed, Europe was in the midst of World War II. Instead of commenting directly on this war—which, he might have argued, was too overwhelmingly immediate for audiences to judge objectively—Bertolt Brecht chose to set the play during a distant historical period. The Thirty Years’ War, notable for its length (1618-1648), savagery, and moral pointlessness, began as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants, but whatever sincere religious aims may have been present at the outset were lost by the time the French (a Catholic nation) entered the fray on the side of the Protestants to further their territorial ambitions. To illustrate the savagery of this pointless war, Brecht informs the audience in the introduction to scene 9 that by that point in the war (1634), Germany had lost half of its population.

That war is likely to grind up all who enter it is foreshadowed in the first scene, when Mother Courage argues with the sergeant who is trying to recruit Eilif. There, Mother Courage, who claims to have “second sight,” not only predicts that the sergeant will soon be a corpse but also foresees the death of her three children. Yet if Mother Courage is indeed able to see the doom-filled future, one might well ask, why on earth would she insist on forever trailing along in the army’s wake? In that answer lies the second important theme of the play, inextricable from the first: the interrelationship between war and capitalism.

Brecht was both a pacifist and a communist. War was utterly pointless, he thought, on any grounds except one of profit, and profit is a heinous motive for butchering thousands (or millions) of people. Mother Courage says that she got her name from driving her wagon through a cannon barrage to save fifty loaves of bread. Her indomitable perseverance over the course of the play would surely strike the audience as heroic and admirable if it were not for the fact that she is always driven by avarice. For this desire she eventually loses everything that she cherishes except that which she appears to value most: her wagon.

War and PeaceMother Courage and Her Children is set during the Thirty Years’ War, a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants that devastated Europe in the seventeenth century (1618-1648). Every event, attitude, and emotion in this play is influenced by the conditions of war. Mother Courage makes her living through a canteen wagon, selling food and assorted goods to soldiers. She and her children pull the wagon, trailing the Swedish regiments wherever the war leads them.

Each of Mother Courage’s children suffers the consequences of the war, ultimately being destroyed by it. Eilif is conscripted when soldiers are needed for the Swedish Protestant army. He becomes a ruthless soldier, losing his humanity, his moral compass, and eventually his life. Swiss Cheese joins the same army as a paymaster to avoid combat, but his role still leads to his death. Kattrin loses her life trying to alert a town of an impending Catholic attack.

Other characters are also deeply impacted by the war. Yvette becomes a camp follower after her soldier boyfriend abandons her. She trails regiments in search of him and eventually turns to prostitution to survive. The play also depicts numerous common people, many of whom see their homes and lands ravaged by the conflict.

Despite losing her children to the war, Mother Courage manages to do well financially. Her business suffers during brief periods of...