Topic 8: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a play by Bertolt Brecht

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a play by Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht’s play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is set in 1930s Chicago. It is a parable for the rise of fascism and nazism in Europe in the 1930s which chronicles the rise to power of a local gangster who takes over the cauliflower trade in the city and embarks on a reign of terror and suppression. Brecht’s choice of words for the title tells us that we always have the power to take action to stop suppression in its tracks, or to bury our heads in the sand and let events take their course.

Or, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet asks himself (and indeed asks us) when he is confronted with the knowledge of the murder of his father, the King of Denmark,

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,                                                                                           

And by opposing end them:

It is always more noble and more life-enhancing to ‘take arms against the sea of troubles’. By opposing, we do end them, and reclaim our freedom to be.

Lines from Arturo Ui are quoted at the end of Cross of Iron, a 1977 drama war film directed by Sam Peckinpah: “Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For, though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again”.