Mother Courage and Her Children Power Quotes

The chaplain excuses the violence of soldiers as an effect of the war. He doesn't blame them; he blames their leaders, the ones he thinks have total control of the war. Here, he sees the power of war in terms of its capacity to dehumanize, driving normal people to do terrible things.

Check out Yvette's makeover. She has jumped the social ladder, going from army prostitute to wealthy widow. Everything about this description—the fact that she's "dressed up to the nines" and has a servant with her—suggests that she has money and more importantly, that she has power. She even gets a noble title, "Countess Starhemberg." Yvette represents one of the only routes to success for people in Mother Courage: making it in a world organized by social and military power.

Laughing at someone with a gun might not be the best idea. Here, Kattrin's murder becomes an expression of the military's power to silence resistance. But there's more to it than that. What the ensign says here also demonstrates that this power is not just with the military as a whole, but also occurs on the individual level. The ensign is not following orders when he shoots Kattrin, and he acknowledges that there might even be consequences for him.