Although there is still confusion about the exact causes of the Thirty Years' War, everyone can recognize how horrible it was and devastating. Large numbers of civilians lost their lives in besieged cities like Magdeburg, and those who survived lost everything. The soldiers who ransacked the city, described in the diary of the city's mayor, Otto von Guericke, completely ignored the sufferings of ordinary civilians in an attempt to acquire as much wealth and pleasure as possible through looting and rape . As Brecht attempts to show through his play Mother Courage and Her Children, soldiers are not the only ones who can harm others by acting according to their economic attitudes and personal interests. Brecht's depiction of the siege in the fifth scene of his play, rather than giving a large-scale picture of the city's destruction, gives a closer example and shows how the selfish actions of ordinary civilians can also be destructive. Brecht is known for his "epic theater", a didactic form of drama in which the audience is supposed to be aware that they are watching a play. He uses "denaturalization", an element of epic theater that contributes to his didactic goals, to draw attention to things he considers unnatural and to distance the audience from the characters so that instead of feeling for them , the audience reflects on their situation. . Brecht wants the audience to think so that they can understand and apply the message he wants the play to convey. By using his close-up depiction of the siege's destruction to focus on the selfish actions of his main character, Mother Courage, and by making her selfishness appear unnatural using elements of epic theater, Brecht attempts to warn his audience of the consequences destructive of individual self-interest, and incite them to respond to war in a collective effort. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Mother Courage uses her economic attitudes and self-interest to legitimize her incredibly selfish response to the effects of the war around her. Brecht denaturalizes his actions by satirizing his selfishness through exaggeration and juxtaposing his losses with those of other characters. He makes her responses absurd, so that the audience views her self-serving actions as unnatural and is therefore unable to sympathize with her. Brecht hopes that if they cannot feel a character, they will instead think about the character's actions and be able to act based on what they have learned. Although his actions are very different from those committed by the soldiers described in von Guericke's diary, Courage and the soldiers both act out of some form of self-interest, economic or otherwise. She and the soldiers both see the siege as profit, the soldiers as plundering, and Courage as following the fight and selling goods to those who need and can afford them. Although Brecht does not necessarily directly compare her to the soldiers, he tries to make his audience perceive her in the same way, as selfish and indifferent to the misfortune of others. After the Catholic army (which Courage followed) is victorious in the siege of Magdeburg, they come across a ruined house and a dying farming family. Seeing this, the chaplain she is traveling with asks her to put some laundry aside to help bandage the family. Starting with a sarcastic refusal to help by saying "What should I do, tear the shirts of the good guysofficers to bandage the peasants? (Brecht 58), she goes on to explain that she will not help the farmers because “they will never pay...because they have nothing” (58). Courage shows that one's economic attitude is one of extreme self-interest. She will give absolutely nothing if she has nothing to gain by doing so. His selfishness is clearest in the lines "I give nothing... I must think of myself" (59) and in his final response: "I have only suffered losses following your victory" (60). While demonstrating his categorical refusal to help, Brecht makes these extreme reactions absurd to the public when he considers that Courage's "losses" amounted to only four officers' shirts. Compared to the farmers' losses, which include their homes and businesses, at least one member, and perhaps the lives of family members, Courage's losses seem like nothing. Despite this, she complains more bitterly about what she has lost than the farmers. The only complaint from either is when the man states that his arm has been disemboweled. As the farmers bleed out in front of their ruined houses, Courage refuses the shirts needed to make the bandages because it would not be good for business and she would lose half a guilder for each shirt. Courage is also shown to be extremely selfish when she forces Kattrin to return the baby to her dying mother, telling her to "return him to his mother...before you get attached and I have to spend hours looking after him." move away” (60), showing that she only thinks of herself in the face of the misery of others. She shows no sympathy for the baby and her family and has no concern for the baby's well-being. Brecht has Mother Courage respond to the misfortunes of the defeated civilian family in such an extreme way as to denaturalize the scene. The goal of denaturalization in epic theater is to make a scene unrealistic, and therefore irrelevant, so that the audience thinks rather than feels. This is done so that the audience can see the message of the play more clearly without their feelings getting in the way. Brecht also does this with things that he considers unnatural and that he wants the audience to consider unnatural. If audience members sympathize with something or view something as normal, he wants them to examine why they feel that way and why they have allowed it to become normal. In this scene, Brecht does this with Courage's responses to war because he wants the audience to understand that reactions like his are not natural ways to respond. It portrays Courage as abnormally and incredibly selfish, such that the audience is incapable of feeling sympathy for her. This way, the audience will reflect on their self-serving actions and learn from their consequences instead of feeling Courage's "losses." However, as this play was written during World War II and shown in Germany shortly after the war ended, there was always a risk that its intended audience, with the war fresh in mind, would end when even by identifying with the losses of characters such as the farmers and has his thoughts on the message of the play mixed with sympathy and emotions. To try to ensure that the audience learns the play's message about self-interest instead of feeling the characters' feelings, Brecht adds additional elements of denaturalization to the scene. One thing he does throughout the play to achieve this is to add humor or absurd statements during sad or serious moments to interrupt the audience's emotions. In this scene, one of the first things a soldier says to Courage is "The general has only authorized one hour of looting... It would be inhumane toallow more, he said” (58), a strange statement that creates a dark feeling. of humor about the destructive situation, incongruously implying that the hour of looting was somehow “humane”. Its strange logic and inappropriate placement should surprise audiences. Another moment full of dark humor and logically insane is when the same soldier says "Too bad they don't convert" (59) about the dying family, as if conversion would have saved them. The audience should immediately see something wrong with this sentence and realize that if the peasants had been Catholic, it would not have stopped them from being injured or their homes from being destroyed by artillery. They were not given the opportunity to convert and were then attacked for refusing. They were attacked because conquest of their city was the army's goal and they lived on the way. Perhaps this is what the public thinks, and their concerns are addressed when it is revealed that the farmers are actually Catholic, like the army that attacked them. This obviously did not help the farmers in this situation. Illogical and misplaced jokes like these create a denaturalizing effect in the same way as the oddly structured and performed songs in other scenes. They are intended to surprise the audience by disrupting the action of the play with absurdity, so that the audience is not lulled into accepting what they see on stage as a true depiction of war. Brecht also disrupts public expectations by leaving the fate of the farmers ambiguous. The scene ends and the characters move forward while all we know about the family is that their house is destroyed and that the Chaplain has not yet managed to stop their bleeding. The last sentence of this scene is “Someone is still inside” (60), leaving the scene intentionally ambiguous. The public will never know what happened to the person still inside and whether the farmers and their baby live or die. This would interrupt the flow of the play and disturb the audience, who expect to know what happens to the characters. Additionally, by eliminating the farmers before they die or are saved, Brecht gives the audience fewer emotions to sympathize with. Things like this, similar to Courage's satire of selfishness, are meant to make the play unrealistic to remind the audience that they are watching something staged and not an accurate depiction of real events. Brecht gives this heavily denaturalized depiction of the Siege of Magdeburg to ensure that his message is not lost on the audience because of their feelings. The message that Brecht wants the audience to think about in this scene is that there are destructive consequences that arise from acting as an individual out of self-interest and based on economic attitudes. Working collectively to respond to war is the best way to help. Von Guericke's diary gives a more general picture of the siege and how the personal interests of the citizens of Magdeburg were affected. He describes the extremely high number of civilian deaths and describes the enormous piles of bodies left after the siege and sacking of the city. It tells the story of the families left in ruins after greedy soldiers took everything they owned and of the women the soldiers raped. Von Guericke may not have intended to convey this specific message, but his diary shows that soldiers' self-interest has horrific effects on the lives of civilians. Brecht's depiction of the siege gives a more specific example of the harm caused to the civilians of Magdeburg with the description of the farming family..