The Threepenny Opera

by

Bertolt Brecht

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Themes and Colors
Greed, Selfishness, and Corruption Theme Icon
Love and Sex Theme Icon
The Ravages of Capitalism  Theme Icon
Theater, Archetypes, and Artifice Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Threepenny Opera, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Ravages of Capitalism  Theme Icon

In The Threepenny Opera, ordinary people from all walks of life make extra cash by posing as poor beggars. They do so by purchasing the accoutrements of begging (cardboard signs, faux stumps to give themselves the appearance of being amputees, and oily, shabby clothes) at The Beggar’s Friend, a shop run by Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum. However, “the poorest of the poor,” those who have actually been forced into begging, are never seen onstage. As the rich literally profit off of the poor, Brecht—a politically divisive figure whose career often suffered because of his radical outspokenness concerning his anti-capitalist values—uses The Threepenny Opera to show how capitalism has ravaged society. He ultimately argues that until a better economic system takes its place, all human life is doomed to be a “vale of tribulation” marked by sorrow, corruption, and coldness—not just in society, but in the very soul.

Throughout The Threepenny Opera, Brecht supplies many scenes, songs, and lines which further his assertion that capitalism makes futile and hopeless all human endeavor toward personal or collective progress. Two songs in particular (taken from Act 3, the height of the play’s commotion) stand out as emblematic of Brecht’s messaging about the cruelty and banality of capitalism.  “The Song of Futility of All Human Endeavor” (sung somewhat triumphantly by Peachum at the start of the Act 3) is a tune whose message is exactly what the song’s title suggests. In the song, Peachum warns against making plans for one’s life or even attempting to live “by [one’s own] head,” or one’s intellect. Men’s “ideal ambitions / Are one great big cheat,” Peachum asserts. He is straightforward and unemotional as he delivers his sardonic number. Brecht includes “The Song of Futility of All Human Endeavor” to show how life under capitalism has warped not only his characters’ morals, but their outlooks as well. Peachum has found a way to survive in a corrupt capitalist society that lets him live—but this number suggests that his survival comes at great cost not just to his own sense of self-worth but to his belief in any kind of happiness, fulfillment, or meaningful success. Brecht’s characters reflect his own disillusionment with the offerings of life under capitalism—but also with people’s collective inability to pull themselves out of their despair and find a workable solution that allows for the possibility of a better world, just treatment, or fair pay for fair work. 

Shortly after Peachum delivers his thesis on the “futility of all human endeavor,” Ginny Jenny steps forward to address the audience and offer her own take on the same subject. In “The Song of Solomon,” Jenny recounts how famous people throughout history strove for too much, and fell from grace as they did—man is “better off without,” Jenny resignedly sings. Her song even makes reference to “the inquisitive” Brecht’s own struggles against capitalism: “His songs—you loved them so,” she sings; “but when too of the asked where from / The riches of the rich did come / You made him pack his bag and go.” The “consequence[s]” Brecht himself faced throughout his career as a result of his anti-capitalist beliefs is held up against the cruelties done unto Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, King Solomon, and indeed the fictional Macheath. Jenny’s song, like Peachum’s, serves as Brecht’s own commentary on the ways in which capitalism has ravaged not just the organization of society but the individuals within it. People like Jenny—down and out, shunned from the mainstream, filled with self-loathing and a sense of insufficiency—believe that man should do “without” rather than strive for anything within the confines of a society rigged against individuality, progress, and nontraditional success.

The Threepenny Opera is an outright critique of capitalist society. In the mid-1920s, Bertolt Brecht and many of his contemporaries living in Germany’s Weimar Republic dared to dream of a world organized around something other than money—and were often vilified for their beliefs. Almost all of Brecht’s work in some way indicts capitalism—but The Threepenny Opera represents perhaps his most vital, direct assertion that until society finds a better way to organize itself, all human effort toward real progress or happiness will be futile.

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The Ravages of Capitalism Quotes in The Threepenny Opera

Below you will find the important quotes in The Threepenny Opera related to the theme of The Ravages of Capitalism .
Act 1, Scene 1 Quotes

PEACHUM: Something new — that’s what we must have. My business is too difficult. You see, my business is trying to arouse human pity. There are a few things that’ll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is, when they’ve been used several times, they no longer work. Human beings have the horrid capacity of being able to make themselves heartless at will.

Related Characters: Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (speaker)
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1, Scene 2 Quotes

POLLY (crying): All those poor people, just for a few bits of furniture!

MACHEATH: And what furniture! Junk! You’re right to be angry. A rosewood harpsichord — and a Renaissance sofa. That’s unforgivable. And where’s a table?

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker), Polly Peachum (speaker)
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

MACHEATH: We were boyhood friends, and though the great tides of life have swept us far apart, although our professional interests are quite different — some might even say diametrically opposed — our friend­ship has survived it all. […] Seldom have I, the simple hold-up man […] undertaken the smallest job without giving my friend Brown a share of the proceeds (a considerable share, Brown) as a token and a proof of my unswerving loyalty to him. And seldom has the all-powerful Sheriff […] organized a raid without previously giving a little tip-off to me, the friend of his youth. […] It’s all a matter of give and take.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker), Tiger Brown
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1, Scene 3 Quotes

PEACHUM: Well, what do you want? What can I do about it if people have hearts of granite. I can’t make you five stumps! In ten minutes I can make such a wreck out of any man that a dog would howl if he saw him. What can I do if people won’t howl? There, take an­other stump, if one’s not enough for you.

Related Characters: Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (speaker)
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Related Characters: Polly Peachum (speaker), Mrs. Peachum (speaker)
Page Number: POLLY AND MRS. PEACHUM: We do not mind confessingThe whole thing is depressing.The world is poor and men are bad And we have nothing more to add. 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 1 Quotes

POLLY: Mac, last night I had a dream. I was looking out of the window and I heard laughter in the street, and when I looked up I saw our moon, and the moon was quite thin, like a penny that’s all worn away. Don’t forget me, Mac, in the strange cities.

Related Characters: Polly Peachum (speaker), Macheath
Related Symbols: The Moon
Page Number: 47
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 3 Quotes

MACHEATH: In spring I ask: could there be something to it?
Could not Macheath be great and solitary?
But then the year works round to January
And I reply: My boy, you’ll live to rue it.
Poverty makes you sad as well as wise
And bravery mingles danger with the fame.
Poor, lonely, wise and brave — in heaven’s name!
Good-bye to greatness! I return the prize
With this my repartee of repartees:
None but the well-to-do can take their ease.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker)
Page Number: 57
Explanation and Analysis:

MACHEATH: What does a man live by? By resolutely
Ill-treating, beating, cheating, eating some
other bloke!
A man can only live by absolutely
Forgetting he’s a man like other folk!

CHORUS OFF:
So, gentlemen, do not be taken in:
Men live exclusively by mortal sin.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker)
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 1 Quotes

PEACHUM: Come on, come on! You’d all be rotting in the sewers of Wapping if I hadn’t spent sleepless nights working out how to extract a few pence from your poverty. And I did work out something: that the rich of the earth indeed create misery, but they cannot bear to see it. They are weaklings and fools just like you. As long as they have enough to eat and can grease their floors with butter so that even the crumbs that fall from their tables grow fat, they can’t look with indifference on a man collapsing from hunger — although, of course, it must be in front of their house that he collapses.

Related Characters: Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (speaker)
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:

PEACHUM: The law is simply and solely made for the exploitation of those who do not understand it or of those who, for naked need, cannot obey it. And who­ ever would pick up the crumbs of this exploitation must strictly obey the law.

Related Characters: Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (speaker), Tiger Brown
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:

PEACHUM: Go make yourself a plan
And be a shining light.
Then make yourself a second plan
For neither will come right.

For the situation
Men aren’t bad enough or vile.
Human aspiration
Only makes me smile.

Go running after luck
But don’t you run too fast:
We all are running after luck
And luck is running last.

For the real conditions
Men are more demanding than is meet.
Their ideal ambitions
Are one great big cheat.

Related Characters: Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (speaker), Tiger Brown
Page Number: 76
Explanation and Analysis:

GINNY JENNY: You know the inquisitive Bertolt Brecht
His songs — you loved them so.
But when too oft he asked where from
The riches of the rich did come
You made him pack his bag and go.
Oh how inquisitive was Brecht!
But long before the day was out
The consequence was clear, alas!
Inquisitiveness had brought him to this pass:
A man is better off without.

Related Characters: Ginny Jenny (speaker)
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 3 Quotes

POLLY: Mackie, are you very nervous? Who was your father? There’s so much you haven’t told me. I don’t understand it at all: you were really always quite healthy.

MACHEATH: Polly, can’t you help me out?

POLLY: Of course.

MACHEATH: With money, I mean.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker), Polly Peachum (speaker)
Page Number: 88
Explanation and Analysis:

MACHEATH: The outlaws, bandits, burglars, gunmen
All Christian souls that love a brawl
Abortionists and pimps and fun-men
I cry them mercy one and all.

Except the coppers — sons of bitches —
For every evening, every morning
Those lice came creeping from their niches
And frequently without a warning.

Police! My epidermis itches!
But for today I’ll let that fall
Pretend I love the sons of bitches
And cry them mercy one and all.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker)
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:

PEACHUM: Therefore all remain standing where you are now and sing the chorale of the poorest of the poor, of whose difficult life you have shown us something today. In reality their end is generally bad. Mounted messengers from the Queen come far too seldom, and if you kick a man he kicks you back again. Therefore never be too eager to combat injustice.

Related Characters: Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (speaker)
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:

ALL: Combat injustice but in moderation:
Such things will freeze to death if left alone.
Remember: this whole vale of tribulation
Is black as pitch and cold as any stone.

Related Characters: Macheath (speaker), Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (speaker), Polly Peachum (speaker), Mrs. Peachum (speaker), Tiger Brown (speaker), Ginny Jenny (speaker), Lucy Brown (speaker), Constable Smith (speaker), Money Matthew (speaker), Hook-finger Jacob (speaker)
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis: