What is War Worth?

Though my last two postings have been about modern coverage of war, this posting will focus on how the 30 years war is seen in various works and interpretations over time. The two examples that I will be focusing on are Bertolo Brecht’s Mother Courage and Hans JakobChristoffel von Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius Simplicissimus. Over the course of this posting I will observe similarities and differences of genre and storytelling.

            First, let us take a look at Bertol Brecht’s Mother Courage. The first thing to consider, especially when looking at any work by Brecht, is the underlying mission of his play as well his past experiences that have shaped the playwrights vision. In Theater of War, Director John Walter takes us into the mind of Bertol Brecht, and what led him to create one of the greatest plays about war, specifically in the epic genre. The documentary itself does a fantastic job of combining the history of Bertol Brecht’s life with the deliberate and artful decisions made by the plays translator Tony Kushner (who is a playwright himself). Meryl Streep plays the strong, steadfast, yet money driven Mother Courage. We see her character develop from the initial table readings to the final product. If you watch the documentary (which I highly recommend you do), Brecht’s philosophy of the audience is evident – he does not want an emotional audience, as he wants to teach people through his plays. When people would express emotional responses at his plays, Brecht was known to get extremely frustrated with both the audience and himself, thinking that he had not done his job to separate the didactic nature of his plays from the characters that he had created.

pierre-marteau.com

            Standing in stark contrast to the dynamic and impactful performance of Brecht’s Mother Courage, is Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius Simplicissimus. The story follows a homeless hermit, who is unbelievably naïve, as he goes through the motions of the 30 years war. In fact, Simplicius’s is called Simplicius because he is so simple that he does not even know his own name. This picaresque novel pokes fun at the dimwitted nature of Simplicius, as he is constantly taken advantage on and thrown in awkward situations that he has absolutely no idea how to deal with. This genuine naiveté is shown as Simplicius is tasked with watching sheep on his family’s farm where he was told to watch out for wolves that may attack his sheep; simple right? Well, the only thing that he knows about wolves is that they have 4 legs, like the majority of land mammals. When he sees horsemen come onto the field, where his sheep are, initially thinks they are wolves (since they have 4 legs), but when the horsemen take Simplicius away, he assumes that they are looking after his sheep. In reality, the horsemen came to pillage the land and the farmhouse. It is with a series of such woeful, yet humorous events that this novel shows the more simple impacts of war. 

http://www.history.com/topics/thirty-years-war

            When comparing these two texts, there is a great deal of underling similarity between two characters that appear to be worlds apart. While Mother Courage is far more independent that Simplicius, both of their lives are directly affected by the war that is going on around them. Mother Courage’s livelihood is based upon there being a war, so she can sell her goods, while Simplicius becomes more than just another hermit because the war has placed him in such odd situations. The Thirty Years war, setting of Mother Courage and Simpliccius Simplicissimus, was “… a pointless, grotesquely protracted, gruesome catastrophe for everyone except the handful of victors among the European aristocracy who profited from it,” detailing how, in some extreme cases, life is dependent on war (Kushner).

Works Cited

Brecht, Bertolt, Tony Kushner, and Charlotte Ryland. Mother Courage and Her Children = Mutter

Courage Und Ihre Kinder. London: Methuen Drama, 2009. Print.

Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph Von, and George Schulz-Behrend. Simplicius Simplicissimus.

Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. Print.

Kushner, Tony. "Tony Kushner: Mother Courage Is Not Just an Anti-war Play." The Guardian, 8 Sept.

2009. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.

Theater of War. Dir. John Walter. Perf. Cast of Mother Courage. Publics Theater, 2006. Play.