Berthold Brecht's explicit intention to impose an emotional distance between the dramatic actors and the spectator audience is in opposition to the use of propaganda techniques intended to increase sympathy and goes against the notions of theatrical realism. Brecht's distancing effect involves destroying any passive emotional response a spectator may have through a series of disconcerting elements: the players' explicit self-awareness, heightened absurdity, deliberate paradoxes and baffling contradictions, and an irreverent juxtaposition of humor and drama that borders on the offensive. . While perhaps significant in themselves, these techniques effectively amount to a constant reminder that the performance one is witnessing is simply a performance, bringing together a panoply of quasi-vaudevillian theatrical elements, including slapstick, songs, and witty forward and back that flood the dramatic space between the audience and the essentially horrific story of an impoverished bastard family in the most devastating war in Central European history. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Brecht's epic theater was in a sense a dialogue with the Germany of the 1940s which had been saturated with poverty, destruction, tragedy and propaganda for decades. East Berliners in 1948, the date of the first performance of Mother Courage and Her Children on German soil, probably did not need a theatrical reminder of the atrocity of war, the universal suffering of innocents and the hideousness of militant nationalism. In this regard, Mother Courage is neither condescending nor preaching to the viewer. Rather, the work itself prioritizes action and presents itself to the audience as a serious discourse for contemplation. However, if the ambition of the alienation technique fails to elicit sympathy, it raises a number of critical questions. Brecht, both in his script and in the instructions for staging the play, effectively manages to ensure that this highly charged audience does not feel any emotion at all about the entirely familiar and plausible story of a tireless woman who loses her children in a European bloodbath? The distance imposed between the public and Mother Courage depends somewhat on her presumed guilt – in other words, do we not feel for Mother Courage because she “deserves” what she got? Or Courage's complicity is a conclusion reachable only through epic theater; If so, doesn't the essentially tragic situation of a character who makes a bad decision and suffers a great loss as a result still elicit pity? That is, despite the distancing effect, isn't Mother Courage at its core still a story that employs a traditional plot structure that one can, despite all the trappings, relate to? And could Brecht actually have applied this lens to a horror as recent as the Holocaust? Regarding this last notion, it seems integral to Mother Courage's function that events take place in the distant past. But the point is that the alienation technique is intended to prevail over emotions, and if it could not be effective in describing the Holocaust, this would imply some “exceptions” or limitations to its capabilities. Despite her flaws, the raw tragedy and cruel ironies of Mother Courage's life may be too powerful to obscure. Even if the actual effect of alienation could be so powerful as to leave the audience with blank expressions and dry eyes, the contemplation of Mother Courage's position itself should arouse strong feelings of sympathy. In a way, Mother Courage is sympathetic in measurein which he experiences profound misfortune resulting from what is essentially just a bad decision or bad speculation. From a self-preservation standpoint, Courage trades the danger of avoiding or subverting war for the danger of following it and profiting from it. Both choices offer profound inherent risks and potential benefits. The war threatens to consume Mother Courage's family and leave them poorer than they were to begin with, but they have the opportunity to make considerable profits and improve their station in life. Likewise, avoiding conflict altogether would offer the family virtually no opportunity to earn enough money to survive in a difficult economy, but it would be relatively safe from the threat posed by conflict. The outcome of the play suggests that by acting as a beneficiary of conflict, war and profiting from corruption and atrocities both directly and indirectly, Mother Courage becomes complicit in war and all its negative effects. She, therefore, takes on some responsibility both for specific events within the war and for the continuation of the overall conflict, all of which she directly profits from. For example, Courage exploits Eilif's cruel murder and deception in Scene 2, only scolding her son for not giving up. In scene 8, when the specter of peace threatens Mother Courage's affairs, she reacts with modest appreciation but great disappointment at a mediocre speculation she made: "I am happy with peace even if I am ruined" (84). After being scolded by the chaplain, Courage observes, "Do you remember what one fox said to another that was caught in a trap? 'If you stay there, you're just asking for trouble'" (86), not just accusing the chaplain. of hypocrisy but also indicating that it is trapped in a war for which it takes no responsibility. Yet at the end of this same scene, Courage sings of his chariot supplying a war that requires human participation: "If it must last, this war needs you!" (94). However, on a practical level, Mother Courage's participation has no effect on the extent of the war. The machinations of generals and monarchs such as Tilly and Gustavus Adolphus, supposedly pious and blameless men, loom over the war's variously violent, drunken, and corrupt inferior participants who populate the work. The political situation and the central religious conflict seem intractable and equally distant, and despite the perspicacity of the cook and Mother Courage in discussing in scene 3 the underlying profit and class struggle that the war represents, the consensus is resignation. The Cooks and the Courages find themselves similarly trapped by two needs, and consequently assume that their decision whether or not to accept the war and participate in it is entirely personal, since they do not consider themselves consequential actors in the conflict. The fact that Mother Courage changes sides after capture by Catholic forces further describes her irrelevance. He professes no serious loyalty to either party and espouses no real political or religious purpose in his involvement; that is, Mother Courage acts as a neutral participant and beneficiary willing to temporarily align with both parties. Furthermore, Courage recognizes that “the defeats and victories of comrades above are not always defeats and victories for comrades below,” placing himself at odds with both warring sides (52). Mother Courage defines herself as a prisoner of the Catholics, like "lice in the fur" (52), suggesting that despite providing the Catholics with much-needed canteen, Courage sees herself as a parasite who adds nothing to the war. How much of an accomplice could it make her in.