Who is macheath

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At the end he remains a ruthless criminal who cannot see beyond his own self-interest. He never expresses remorse for his crimes, nor does he consider whether he should have done something differently. He always narrowly focuses on his immediate desires and needs. Macheath possesses many traditional heroic traits: he is sexually appealing, funny, charming, and physically powerful. Throughout the play other characters comment on his charisma.

In his actions, though, Macheath is anything but heroic. Widely viewed as corrupt, even though nobody ever managed to trace any particular frauds or embezzlements to him, to satirists in the eighteenth century he represented all that was wrong with the ruling aristocratic oligarchy. During the Victorian period, with the rise of the penny dreadful publishing industry, tales of highwaymen became immensely popular with both adults and youths of the lower middle and working classes.

Dick Turpin —39 appeared regularly in the columns of these cheap magazines, as did older highwaymen such as Robin Hood and the afore-mentioned Jack Sheppard.

The actual stories differed little from other contemporary tales of highwaymen, being mostly full of daring adventures, escapes from the police, and the rescue of young maidens from aristocratic villains. This comes through most clearly in the song entitled Die Moritat von Mackie Messer , sung usually at the beginning of the play, which is the song we all know as Mack the Knife :.

Eventually Mack is arrested and is taken to be hanged, but at the last minute a pardon arrives from Queen Victoria for him. He is released and is soon elevated to a Baronetcy, the implication being that he can now steal from people legally because he is a member of the aristocracy.

Through this means, Brecht, a socialist, offers a critique of the corruption endemic in the modern capitalist city in which thieves are no better than the elites, which is a similar argument to that made by Gay almost two centuries before.

Mac's good luck is absurd—things like that don't happen in real life, right? Or do they? Those are the questions Brecht wants us to ask when we see Mac's fate. Why does the worst human being on the stage get the best results? The greediest, most violent, lying, evil monster is also the most celebrated. Brecht wants us to see how those in power got there.

He was writing in Berlin during Hitler's rise, so it's not too hard to connect the dots of his criticism. But he's not just mad at Hitler; Brecht wants to shake up the entire structure of society and the injustices that are built into it. He uses Mac to make people think about those injustices and hopefully do something about them.

Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. Study Guide. By Bertolt Brecht. Previous Next. Macheath, a.