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Arms and the Man
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Arms and the Man
Catherine is status-conscious and eager to keep up with the latest fashions of genteel society. She wants her daughter to marry someone with high social prestige and wealth, and her advice --...
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Arms and the Man
The first thing you should do as you work on this assignment is think about the differences between the two characters. Catherine Petkoff is an upperclass Bulgarian woman with no personal...
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Arms and the Man
This dichotomy really oversimplifies and misrepresents Shaw. Shaw was first and foremost a satirist whose plays tend to debunk popular misperceptions using humor and irony. Thus Arms and the Man is...
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Arms and the Man
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Arms and the Man
The division of plays into “acts” has three functions: the social need for pauses in the entertainment experience, both physical and psychological; the theatrical necessities of costume change,...
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Arms and the Man
In Act 1 of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, Raina and Bluntschli have an extended conversation. The conversation begins when Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary who has been fighting for the...
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Arms and the Man
The conversation between Raina and Captain Bluntschli in the first act of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw sets up the initial conflict in the play and points towards its resolution. There...
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Arms and the Man
Bluntschli says that the bet would rob Major Petkoff because Catherine is sure to be right about the whereabouts of the major's favorite coat. So, if Major Petkoff bets against both Catherine and...
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Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw is set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War. This was a war between Serbia and Bulgaria that started on 14 November 1885 and ended on 28 November 1885. More...
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Arms and the Man
Major Sergius Saranoff is an officer in the Bulgarian army. Bulgaria at this period was on the margins of Europe, and generally considered somewhat primitive and unsophisticated by Europeans....
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Arms and the Man
As is typical of Shaw's work, Act 1 of Arms and the Man begins with an elaborate two paragraph description of the scene in the bedchamber. Your assignment is basically to paraphrase this...
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Arms and the Man
Nicola thinks Louka is being irrational, acting in ways that undermine her personal goals. He sees that she aspires to climb the social ladder. She is interested in marrying her way into a higher...
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Arms and the Man
In general therms, "the Swiss" are citizens of Switzerland. Historically, and even through the present day, Switzerland tended to remain neutral in the great wars tearing apart Europe, and thus a...
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Arms and the Man
When Raina first meets Bluntschli, he looks terrible, and presents a striking visual contrast with Sergius's heroic appearance in the portrait. The stage directions tell us he is unwashed and...
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Arms and the Man
The immediate cause is Major Petkoff's request that Catherine accompany him to talk to the men in Act III. Bluntschli had just told Sergius to take a strict, forceful tone with his soldiers: Tell...
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Arms and the Man
The "cherry gun" or "cherry tree cannon" was an invention created in Bulgaria for use in the famous April Uprising fought against the Ottoman Empire. While it was not a very effective weapon, its...
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Arms and the Man
This is from the third act, when Catherine agrees to accompany Petkoff outside to help him deliver the orders. Petkoff wants to give the appearance that he will carry out Bluntschli's instructions...
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Arms and the Man
Major Sergius Saranoff and Major Petkoff serve two major roles in Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw. They serve first as foils to Captain Bluntschli and second as obstacles to the romance...
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Arms and the Man
You can answer this question on two levels, the explicit and the implicit. On the explicit level, Bluntschli gives them explicit instructions to tell the men that they must leave at once, and make...
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Arms and the Man
This question refers to events in Act III, when Major Petkoff complains that he can't find his old coat. Catherine, his wife, insists that it's in the blue closet; Petkoff protests that he looked...
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Arms and the Man
I think the answer is probably "no." Nicola only pretended that he'd found it there in order to please Catherine. The question refers to one of the farcical moments in the play. Major Petkoff and...
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Arms and the Man
The general answer to the question is that Catherine wants to show that she is a high status, cultivated person. If the question refers to her specific use of the bell in Act III, the answer is...
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Arms and the Man
To be "prosaic" is to be concerned with everyday, mundane, practical considerations. It is the opposite of being poetic, romantic, or focused on exalted subjects. So Raina is being...
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Arms and the Man
George Bernard Shaw was himself a pacifist and Arms and the Man is one of several anti-war plays he wrote over his long career. The main literary device Shaw uses to evoke this theme and support...
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Arms and the Man
In the first act, Catherine advises Raina in two areas. The play actually begins with Catherine imploring Raina to go back to bed before she catches her cold. Later, Catherine advises Raina to stay...
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Arms and the Man
There are two major reasons. The first, and most pressing, is that Catherine doesn't want Sergius, who is present, to hear the truth about Bluntschli. Telling the truth about the coat would mean...
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Arms and the Man
This is our first hint that Sergius isn't just disillusioned about warfare. He also has misgivings about what Raina expects of him. He is finding those expectations onerous, a sentiment he'll...
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Arms and the Man
The man is trying to protect her. He intends to put up a fight when the soldiers enter the room, and he doesn't want her to get hurt in the crossfire. This is in stark contrast with the impression...
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Arms and the Man
Despite the serious questions raised in it about the nature of war and how literature and the arts are complicit in its romanticization, Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw is, in terms of...
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Arms and the Man
George Bernard Shaw's play, Arms and the Man, is set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. The play takes place just after the Bulgarian victory in the Battle of Slivnitsa. The "man" of the title...
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Arms and the Man
George Bernard Shaw was a satirist of the highest order, perhaps one of the greatest in modern history. And he was a cynic, imbued with a less-than-hospitable perception of the artifice and...
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Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw is set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. In the opening scene, we discover Raina, the female romantic lead of the play, discussing her fiancé,...
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Arms and the Man
To appreciate the significance of the comparison made in George Bernard Shaw’s antiwar play Arms and the Man of Major Sergius Saranoff to Miguel de Cervantes’ antihero from his classic of...
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Arms and the Man
One of the best ways to see who speaks for the playwright in Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw is to read the Preface. Shaw is notorious for writing long, entertaining essays as prefaces to...
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Arms and the Man
First, my favorite characters may not be your favorites; this is something you really need to decide for yourself as you read the play. That being said, my favorite male character is Captain...
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Arms and the Man
The anti-romantic element is presented in two ways, through dialogue and through situational irony. The character Raina at first believes in the romantic view of war and in her fantasies embodies...
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Arms and the Man
The typical hero is brave, strong, and romantic, concerned with honor and glory. In Homer's epics, for example, a key motivation for the hero was "kleos" (fame) that would live on after the hero's...
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Arms and the Man
We are left to make our own inferences, and it may seem puzzling to the modern reader. Nowadays we are used to fast travel, cell phones, and electronic communication. How did people manage without...
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Arms and the Man
The coat in Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw serves as a plot device. It gives Captain Bluntschli an excuse to revisit Raina to return the coat without explicitly stating that he has a...
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Arms and the Man
The main aim of George Bernard Shaw in his play Arms and the Man is to debunk the romantic image of war; as a playwright, Shaw deromanticizes war by mocking or undermining characters who have the...
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Arms and the Man
Love is explored in Arms and the Man by Shaw in two places: through war and through romance. The major romance in the play is between Raina and Sergius. Superficially, they are an ideal match....
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Arms and the Man
The unprofessional act that the Man is describing is Serius' leading a "heroic" cavalry charge into a machine gun nest. A few lines down he elaborates as follows: He did it like an operatic...
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Arms and the Man
The meeting of Raina and Captain Bluntschli drives the central plot and thematic concerns of the play. Before the meeting, we have a dialogue between Raina and her mother which serves as...
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Arms and the Man
There are two prior moments in Act II when Catherine appears to be disapproving of Raina for doing something that isn't "straightforward" (frank, unstudied, simple, or honest). The first occurs...
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Arms and the Man
At the beginning of the play, Raina's conversation with her mother, Catherine Petkoff, alludes to the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885. In Act 1, we learn that Raina is engaged to a Bulgarian officer,...
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Arms and the Man
The real hero of the play is not the seemingly dashing Serguis, the "heroic" military leader with whom Raina initially believes she is in love. Instead, it is the mercenary soldier Bluntschli, who...
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Arms and the Man
The first element of military melodrama is the setting. The play takes place during the Serbo-Bulgarian War just after the November 1885 Battle of Slivnitsa in a town near Dragoman Pass where the...
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Arms and the Man
George Bernard Shaw's play Arms and the Man is a play about both love and war. In a sense, Shaw sees these two themes as connected, in that romantic attitudes, which glamorize war and relationships...
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Arms and the Man
In one sense, we can think of the play Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw as a sort of dramatic bildungsroman, documenting the growth of the character Raina towards a greater self-knowledge...
