Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder by Bertolt Brecht (#12, Classic)

I am taking an Intro to German Literature course and because I am very adamant about making sure everything I count towards my 50 books is of a certain length, Mutter Courage is the first work we read that I could justify counting. Kafka's Die Verwandlung (Metamorphosis) was close, but since I couldn't find it outside a collection of his short fiction, I couldn't rightly count it as a book, although it was 60-some pages.

I found this play rather difficult. I read it in an English translation first, and then struggled with the Bavarian dialect in which it was written. I am not a native speaker, and although the bulk of the time spent in Germany was in a city in Bavaria, it didn't help me much when reading. It was an ironic play, seeing as how Mutter Courage is quite possibly the most unfit name for the main character, Anna Fierling. I found her to be lacking in courage for most of the play, and I might even go so far as to argue that her children were the ones who showed the most courage, while she sat back and created the situations that led to all three of their deaths.

I wouldn't recommend reading it in English though, because the beauty of the play lies in the dialectic German expressions, especially those that come out of Mutter Courage's mouth. There are some truly funny scenes with her son Swiss Cheese--yes, that is her second son's name--and also with the prostitute character Yvette. Did I feel for Mutter Courage at the end, when she is left alone, pulling her wagon by her lonesome? Not really, but perhaps that is what Brecht was going for. He wanted his audience to be distanced from the characters, and I think that is exactly how one feels at the end.