Arms and the Man

George Bernard Shaw

Full Title: Arms and the Man

When Written: early 1890s
Where Written: Ireland; England
When Published: 1894
Literary Period: Transitional: end of Romanticism, beginning of Modernism
Genre: Comedy/Comedy of Ideas
Setting: Bulgaria, Petkoff Family

Drama of Ideas
"Drama of Ideas," pioneered by George Bernard Shaw, is a type of discussion
play in which the clash of ideas and hostile ideologies reveals the most acute
problems of social and personal morality.

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish
playwright, critic, and political activist. His influence on Western theatre,
culture, and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote
more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman
(1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating
both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading
dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success,
Arms and the Man in 1894.

Characters
● Raina: Raina is a romantic young lady. She is engaged to Sergius.
● Bluntschli: Bluntschli is a Swedish professional soldier who fights with
the Servians. He climbs through Raina's window looking for a place to
hide.
● Sergius: Sergius is Raina's fiancée. He is a soldier.
● Catherine: Catherine is Raina's mother. She is concerned about
appearances but also practical.
 ● Petkoff: Paul Petkoff is a major in the Bulgarian army. He is Catherine's
husband and Raina's father.
● Louka: Louka is a young servant in Catherine and Raina's home.
However, she is described as "so defiant that her servility to Raina is
almost insolent."
● Nicola: Nicola is a middle-aged servant who values himself on his rank
in servitude. He is engaged to Louka.
● Officer: The officer is a Bulgarian soldier. He stops by the Petkoffs'
house while on patrol, looking for fugitive soldiers.

Plot Summary
The play is set in Bulgaria and set during the brief Bulgarian-Serbian war in the
1880s. It opens with the young romantic Raina Petkoff and her mother
Catherine talking excitedly about a successful cavalry charge led by the
handsome and heroic Sergius, to whom Raina is betrothed. They are thrilled at
his success. Their defiant young servant Louka comes in and tells them that
there will be fighting in the streets soon, and that they should lock all of their
windows.

Raina’s shutters do not lock, and shortly after the gunshots start that night, she
hears a man climb onto her balcony and into her room. He is a Swiss
professional soldier fighting for Servia. Though he fights for the enemy and is
not in the least heroic (he fears for his life, threatens to cry, and carries
chocolates instead of ammo) Raina is touched by his plight. He angers her when
he tells her that the man who led the cavalry charge against them only
succeeded because he got extremely lucky—the Servians were not equipped
with the right ammo. Raina indignantly says that that commander is her
betrothed, and the man apologizes, holding back laughter. Raina nevertheless
agrees to keep the man safe, saying that her family is one of the most powerful
and wealthy in Bulgaria, and that his safety will be ensured as their guest. She
goes to get her mother and when they return he has fallen asleep on Raina’s bed.

In the next act the war has ended, and Major Petkoff (Raina’s father) arrives
home, and Sergius and Raina are reunited. They speak lovingly to one another
about how perfect their romance is. But when Raina goes inside, Sergius holds
Louka in his arms, clearly lusting after her. Louka believes he is taking
advantage of her because she is a servant, and tells him she does not believe she
and he are any different simply because he is rich and she is poor. They part just
as Raina returns. Then, to make things more complicated, the man from Raina’s
balcony, announcing himself as Captain Bluntschli, arrives, to return a coat he
was loaned the morning after he rested at the house. Catherine tries to keep him
from being seen, but Major Petkoff recognizes him, and invites him inside to
help with some of the last remaining military orders.

In the final act, in the library, it comes out that Louka, though she had been
assumed to be engaged to the head servant Nicola, is in love with Sergius, and
he is in love with her. Raina eventually admits she has fallen for Bluntschli, who
is at first hesitant, believing her to be much younger than she is. When he finds
out her real age (23 rather than the 17 he had thought she was), he declares his
affection for her. The play ends happily, with two new couples.
Themes

Romanticism vs Realism: One of the central criticisms of Arms and the Man is
of the tendency of people to romanticize or idealize complex realities: in
particular love and war. Literary romanticism began to decline right around the
time Shaw was born, and the play in many ways illustrates how and why
romanticism historically failed: it could not accurately describe fundamental
human experiences.

Raina is the play’s most obvious romantic. Her relationship with Sergius (whom
the stage directions call a “Byronic hero” after the Romantic poet Lord Byron)
embodies almost all of the romantic ideals: they are both beautiful, refined, and
appear to be infatuated with each other. However this romantic, idealistic vision
of love does not stand up when reality sets in. The “genteel” Sergius lusts
animalistically—even, sometimes, violently—after the servant Louka and Raina
is in love with the anti-romantic Bluntschli. Their ideal romantic love is all an
act. In reality, love is much more multifaceted, and complicated, than Raina and
Sergius make it seem.

Raina and Sergius’s flawed romanticism also shows through in their conception
of war. Raina waxes poetic about how Sergius is an ideal soldier: brave, virile,
ruthless but fair. It turns out Sergius’s cavalry charge was ill-advised, and the
charge only succeeded because the opposing side didn’t have the correct
ammunition. Sergius is not the perfect soldier—he is a farce. And the real
soldier, Bluntschli, runs away from battle and carries sweets instead of a gun.
He also speaks honestly about the brutality and violence of war—which
involves more drunkenness and abuse than it does heroics and gallantry.

Shaw displays an interest in revealing human realities like love and war for
what they really are: often ugly, contradictory, and thoroughly complex. He
implicitly criticizes romantic art for avoiding these realities, and giving us a
sugarcoated version of human life and human history. Conversely, his work puts
forth the argument that art should be able to make sense of and account for
human experiences.
Symbols

The Library
The library in the Petkoff home is often held up as a symbol of their wealth,
status, and accomplishment. Libraries are rare in Bulgarian homes, and
therefore the library does indicate the family’s wealth—but it also ironically
symbolizes their lack of better learning, critical thinking, and cultural
awareness. The library notably has very few books in it, and Major Petkoff,
despite his pride in his library, isn’t very well read. Though it indicates financial
success it also indicates the emptiness and shallowness embodied by people like
Major Petkoff.

Raina’s Novels
Raina is often seen clutching a romantic novel—but, crucially, she is rarely
reading it. She uses the books rather like props. They once again indicate
shallowness and social performance. That Raina neglects to actually read these
novels perhaps suggests the fall of romanticism itself: these books are not truly
useful or interesting to her anymore, and she grows beyond them by the end of
the play.

Chocolate
Chocolate is a symbol of Bluntschli's pragmatism. He knows he will be hungry,
but he might not need additional cartridges. Therefore, he carries chocolate with
him. Raina is appalled to hear this because it is not in keeping with her ideas of
a heroic soldier. However, his statement makes her see the reality of the
hardships soldiers actually face. For that reason, she is grateful Bluntschli tells
her this information; he is speaking to her as an adult. Therefore, she offers him
some of her chocolate and even a place to sleep in her home.

Sergius's Portrait
In the first act Sergius's portrait stands in a position of honor in Raina's room. At
one point, she holds it up and even seems to venerate it. However, the
appearance of the portrait is more important to Raina than the actual man it
represents. Indeed, she doesn't really know this man. This is apparent because
she doesn't know whether Sergius will be heroic in battle and because is
shocked to hear that he wasn't. She has an idealized concept of love.
Important Quotes

“On the balcony a young lady, intensely conscious of the romantic beauty of the
night, and of the fact that her own youth and beauty are part of it, is gazing at
the snowy Balkans.”
-Act 1

“I am so happy—so proud! It proves all our ideas were real after all.”
-Raina, Act 1

“What glory is there in killing wretched fugitives?”

-Raina, Act 1

“Raina: Some soldiers, I know, are afraid of death.

The Man: All of them, dear lady, all of them, believe me. It is our duty to live as
long as we can.”
-Act 1

“I am a Swiss, fighting merely as a professional soldier. I joined Servia because

it came first on the road from Switzerland.”
-Act 1, The Man (Captain Bluntschli)

“There are only two sorts of soldiers: old ones and young ones.”

"nine soldiers out of ten were born fools”

-The Man (Captain Bluntschli), Act 1

“Oh you are a very poor soldier—a chocolate cream soldier! Come, cheer up.”
-Raina, Act 1

“You have the soul of a servant, Nicola.

Yes: that’s the secret of success in service.”
-Louka and Nicola, Act 2
“Sergius Saranoff…is a tall, romantically handsome man…the result is
precisely what the advent of the nineteenth century thought first produced in
England: to wit, Byronism…it is clear that here is Raina’s ideal hero”
-Stage Direction, Act 2

“Dearest, all my deeds have been yours. You inspired me. I have gone through
the war like a knight in a tournament with his lady looking down on him!”
-Act 2, Sergius

“I think we two have found the higher love. When I think of you, I feel that I
could never do a base deed, or think an ignoble thought.”
-Raina, Act 2

“Which of the six of me is the real man? That’s the question that torments me.
One of them is a hero, another a buffoon, another a humbug, another perhaps a
bit of a blackguard. And one, at least, is a coward—jealous, like all cowards.”
-Sergius, Act 2

“I want to be quite perfect with Sergius—no meanness, no smallness, no deceit.

My relation to him is the one really beautiful and noble part of my life.”
-Rainta to Capt. Bluntschli, Act 3

“You don’t know what true courage is…I would marry the man I loved, which
no other queen in Europe has the courage to do...You dare not: you would marry
a rich man’s daughter because you would be afraid of what other people would
say of you.”
-Louka to Sergius, Act 3

“The world is not such an innocent place as we used to think.”

-Sergius, Act 3

“My rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I am a free citizen.”

-Captain Bluntschli, Act 3