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

puzzle Courage contains a quote that pulls the entire play together so innocuously its hard to believe that Brecht originally think it to be so symbolic. Yet, there it is, in scene six, the chaplain rhetorically asks, "What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?" This line operates on the three essential layers of the play the take 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 war as an abnormal event is backward. He sees war as the standard occurrence (the cheese) and peace as merely an interim incidence (the holes in the cheese). Thus peace is nothing without a background knowledge of war upon it a hole is only 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(prenominal) global meaning. In the light of the plot, "What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?" is a question that Mother Courage should ask and apply to herself. Clearly the cheese is Swiss Cheese specifically, and more generally all of her children. Mother Courage only thinks about a certain part of her children - their use to her in her business. She has an odd variety of motherly care for her children abstractly, she has affection for them, but 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 change state 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 substantive 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 undetermined that shes a strong woman like her mother, and yet Mother Cour age 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 receptive to never have existed.