Similar to Brecht’s Mother Courage, war profiteering is the major theme in Mary Courage & Her Children. Although Mary and the corporation she works for are the ones who can directly profit from the war, the money eventually trickles down to the people in the form of jobs making military equipment — and that potential job loss is used as the main motivator to try to convince a wavering Senator to extend war funding.
Mary Courage & Her Children is a reimagining of the 2007 Senate vote to extend funding for the Iraq war. (The vote where the Senate Scarecrows called then-presidential-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s votes against the bill the “the height of irresponsibility.” At the time, Obama said “The country is united in our support for our troops, but we also owe them a plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else’s civil war” [despite the fact this is a war the US invasion created].) In Mary Courage, this vote is close, too close. It’s up to Mary Courage, a lobbyist for a large defense contractor, to use her political clout and the influence money can buy to secure the last 3 votes needed to pass along the bill to the president, who will most surely sign it.
In order to sway the four undecided, freshmen senators, Mary Courage is planning a party, a fundraiser with the proceeds most likely going to rebuild homes and schools that will be accidentally destroyed in the future.
Of the four undecided votes, one belongs to a senator from the state of Depression, Adrastos “Apollo” Irenicopoulos, the son of Greek immigrants who made millions as a popular musician. The biggest town in his state, Hooverville, has only two jobs of any significance that haven’t been outsourced: going to war and building war machines. He’s caught between voting for the bill to make sure his constituents stay employed and voting against the bill to make sure all children of his constituents come home safe, what he considers the right thing.
Mary Courage is trying to stay focused on the job at hand despite the fact that her son, Veggie, returned wounded from the war. He was the victim of a roadside bomb and is only alive because of a respirator. His brother and sister, Neppo and Catherine, want to “pull the plug” on him to fulfill his wish of dying with honor, but Mary Courage needs him to stay alive so that he isn’t added to the total number of war dead.
