Brecht’s The Three-Penny Opera : A Critique of Anti-Capitalism

Abstract

The Three-Penny Operais an ideal vehicle to condemn the bourgeoisie convention of commodification and exploitationand to agitate for social change byestablishingdialectical and sometime alienated relationshipbetween audience and drama to participate the audience on intellectual argument with the work. The world ofThe Three-Penny Operais full of the poor, the criminals, and the immoral characters as the system has centered the power and money on a few hands. The world is poor. So, the people are obliged to indulge in crime and immoralities, exploitation, treachery. Brechtintendedthe dramato serveasan incentive to his readers and audience tothink about the prevailing social condition and to urge them to bring needful changes in those conditions. This research has tried to explore anti-capitalist themeofthe dramastudying the condition of human being, especially the working or poor people, in capitalist society. Besides it, it also focuses oncritical analysisofthe arbitrarinessofsocialvalueslike religion, love, charity, friendship and law in the drama following the Marxist analysis of literature. The research work finds the drama asanti-capitalist in theme and style since Brecht has used epic theatre approach to denounce the degenerated condition of the poor in the system and to compell the audience to be thoughtful on the deplorable condition where people have to indulge themselves into crime and immoralities. The research seeks to show, the capitalism and crime has relationship of brother and sister. Crime and immoralities are not the by-product of the system rather it is an extension of the system.