First published 1941
Courage follows the armies of the Thirty Years War across Europe, pulling her canteen wagon and selling provisions to soldiers. She has built her life around this mobile business, trading with whoever will pay. Her three children travel with her, but the war that feeds her profits slowly devours them. One by one, violence claims each child while Courage clings to her wagon and the conflict that sustains it. She refuses to abandon the very war that destroys her family. Brecht wrote this chronicle play as World War II began, creating a story about the impossible choices people make when survival depends on the machinery of destruction. Courage must watch her children become casualties of the same armies that provide her income, yet she cannot imagine any other way to live.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war
Vibes: emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-destroyed-by-war, impossible-choices
Setting: Europe
Period: Thirty Years War
176 pages · Paperback · Penguin Classics
Content warnings: child-death, violence, war