Australian Catholic University ENGL202 Essay on Dramatic Speech

This essay examines the dramatic speech qualities present in two plays: Bertolt Brecht's 'Mother Courage and Her Children' and Eugene Ionesco's 'The Chairs'. The essay explores Brecht's use of alienation techniques to distance the audience and stimulate their intelligence, contrasting it with Ionesco's self-conscious techniques in 'The Chairs'. The analysis highlights how Brecht uses various methods, such as hung placards and songs, to engage the audience's intellect, while also comparing the characters' effectiveness in delivering their messages. The essay argues that 'Mother Courage and Her Children' successfully critiques war and capitalism, whereas 'The Chairs' struggles to convey its core points. The essay concludes by emphasizing the dramatic qualities that enable 'Mother Courage and Her Children' to captivate the audience, unlike the perceived shortcomings of 'The Chairs'. The comparison showcases the impact of dramatic techniques on the audience's engagement and understanding of the plays' central themes.

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Dramatic Speech Qualities
Out of the literary genres, the drama is used as an inspiration tool in transferring
messages from the author’s mind to the audience. German playwright, Bertolt Brecht used the
genre to circulate his thoughts and ideas. In the play Mother Courage and her children, Brecht
struggled to prevent the involvement of emotions of the audience from stimulating their
intelligence when responding to the game through the application of alienation as a unique
strategy (Bruun et al., np). The technique introduced a distance between the audience and the
characters they saw on stage. The distancing techniques used by Brecht hindered the
identification of the characters from the spectators and involvement of their emotions with the
play.
Brecht’s intentions in writing the play were to create criticism on war and capitalism
depicting the story of Anna as a mother with her two sons, Eilif and Swiss Cheese and her
daughter Kattrin. Brecht used alienation as a quality of his drama to prevent the audience from
being vicarious with the characters. Acting and tangible illustrations can be applied by
individuals who have not watched the play on stage. The hung placards, actions, songs, and
music used in the game reveal the distancing technique to attract the intelligence of the audience
when responding to the play.
On the other hand, the absurd theatre in the play the chairs have been recognized for its
self-conscious techniques. The stage is seen as an auditorium full of chairs meant for the

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audience. After introducing himself, the older man thanks all the stakeholders involved in the
play. He is a storyteller and an illusionist who crafts characters with his wife. Lonesco rarely
thinks much on the actors because, in his play, the orators are the ones who play the role of
actors, unlike in the play mother courage and her children (Mirza & Jayatee, p.11). He claims
that actors do not understand his work, and when given a chance, they do it unintelligible.
The older man is a coward when doing his responsibilities compared to the courageous
mother who positively delivered her duties. It becomes hard for him to fulfill his messages,
which was done clearly by Anna, the brave mother of three. When the two plays are compared, it
is clear that the chairs have failed to deliver their main points when dramatizing unlike the
mother courage and her children where responsibilities are addressed well as they criticize war
and capitalism in the society. The chairs lack dramatic qualities to reveal the main agenda to the
audience, which makes the play boring compared to mother courage and her children.

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Works Cited
Bruun, Ellen Foyn, et al. "Teaching Empathy with Brecht as Prompter." (2018).
Hofer, Jacob. Shards and Cycles Lighting Design for" The Chairs" By Eugene Ionesco. Diss.
University of Arkansas, 2016.
Mirza, Anum, and Jayatee Bhattacharya. "The Power of Grotesque Realism and the Theatre of
Carnivalesque: A Bakhtian Study of Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco." (International
Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 7.2 (2019): 11-11.