Arms and the Man

The title, Arms and the Man, is an ironic reference to Virgil's Aeneid, which glorifies the warrior. Shaw's play, in contrast, satirizes the idea of the warrior hero, showing Sergius as an...

Arms and the Man is a comedy in the broadest sense of the word, meaning it is not a tragedy: nobody dies and nothing terrible happens. It's also a comedy in the narrower sense that its situation is...

Raina first meets Captain Bluntschli when he hides in her room. He tells her not to try calling out, for he will have no qualms in shooting her if she does so. Seeing her to be an intelligent young...

Shaw takes his title from Virgil's Aeneid: "arma virumque cano,"which means "of arms and the man I sing." Virgil's Aeneid is the heroic story of the Trojan warrior Aeneas, who is credited with...

Shaw explains love and war by juxtaposing authentic love and realistic responses to war against false romance and false heroism. In this play, Sergius represents both false romance and false...

This play functions as a satire with two primary focus subjects: war and love. Throughout the text, Shaw satirizes the romantic notions of war that glorify such a terrible event. We are being...

George Bernard Shaw’s play takes place in a small town in Bulgaria during a war between Bulgaria and Serbia. The time is apparently contemporary with Shaw’s own era, the late nineteenth century....

The title "arms and the man" is taken from the opening line of Virgil's Aeneid, "arma virumque cano" (Latin for "I sing of arms and the man"). In Virgil's poem, it signifies that the work belongs...

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...

To begin with, the stage directions of Arms and the Man—which, in Shaw’s plays, are always highly specific—lay the groundwork by introducing the prominent Bulgarian Petkoff family as big fish in a...

In the play, the concept of "higher love" is based on misguided ideals of war and masculinity. In the first act, Raina initially voices her doubts about Sergius' ability to excel in combat. She...

In this 1894 play that skewers glorifying warfare and making heroes of soldiers, Captain Bluntschli is the practical realist who sets the action in motion by deserting from the army and hiding in...

Bluntschli says this to Raina after he deserts from the army and hides out in her room. At the point he says it, he is asking her to hide him because soldiers are arriving to search for him. He...

The “chocolate cream soldier” is a reference to the character of Captain Bluntschli in George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man. The play is set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. The two...

George Bernard Shaw was a self-effacing man, never concerned with how his comments and outspokenness would affect him. His main aim was always to share his message, and, in doing so, he would point...

As noted by thanatassa, Bluntschli uses the return of the coat as an excuse to visit Raina. This, along with the discovery of the photograph, helps ensure that our lovers will eventually marry. But...

George Bernard Shaw's title "Arms and the Man," is based on the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid, "arma virumque cano" (I sing of the arms and the man). These words would have been familiar to...

Raina is readying for bed in the darkness of her chamber when she sees her shutters open and close and hears ragged breathing in her room. A match is briefly lit and then put out, and a man's...

Raina and Bluntschli's meeting is important because it sets the plot of the play in motion. Even more importantly, it creates a conflict for Raina and causes her to have to rethink her ideas about...

The first act of most plays functions as the setup. This is true of act 1 of Arms and the Man as well. It sets up three important things: the setting, the characters, and the main conflict. The...

In the first two acts of Arms and the Man, Raina’s respective relationships with Bluntschli and Sergius are established and then begin to be switched. Initially, Bluntschli is a stranger and an...

Arms and the Man is an anti-war play by George Bernard Shaw. It is one of his first plays, and the title is taken from the first line of Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid ("Arms, and the man I...

A satire is a work that uses humour, irony, or wit to show up the failings and pretensions of individuals, insititutions or ideas. This play satirises conventional notions of war as being a heroic...

Arms and the Man can be described as a modern play, even though it was first produced in 1894 (and followed the Naturalistic characteristics Shaw used in writing), by looking at the themes focused...

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...

Shaw's play The Arms and the Man is a comedy that uses humor to present a serious critique of romantic views of marriage and warfare. The opening of the play presents the conventional ideology of...

Captain Bluntschli is the opposite of Major Sergius Saranoff, who presents himself as a dashing and romantic military hero. Raina thinks she is in love with Serguis, and he plays his lover's role...

The theme of love in George Bernard Shaw's play Arms and the Man is addressed in many ways. One of the main themes that Shaw's play arguably addresses is how people tend to idealize and romanticize...

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...

Shaw's Arms and the Man is not realistic, if we define realism as characterized by an attempt to accurately reflect life as it really is. I would agree that is an example of nineteenth century...

Don Quixote has read so many romance novels about knights riding around the countryside saving people from danger that it drives him to madness (insanity) and he decides to become a knight himself....

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...

Shaw uses irony to create humor in this play that shows the absurdity of war and exposes false heroism. Captain Bluntschli, the seemingly dishonorable deserter from battle, proves to be more...

Not only is Arms and the Man an anti-Romantic comedy, but its author, George Bernard Shaw, was the quintessential anti-Romantic writer. The period known as Romanticism was characterized by a more...

Shaw's 1894 Arms and the Man is set near the end of the short war between Serbia and Bulgaria in 1885. As Raina, a rich young Bulgarian woman stands on her balcony, filled with romantic thoughts,...

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the term "problem play" was used to refer to a drama that tackled important social or political issues. The genre was often associated with Henrik...

The opening scene of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw introduces the context, the main characters, and the central conflict of the play. In this, as in all of Shaw's plays, it is important...

Socialism and social equality are predominant themes in Arms and the Man. During the time Shaw wrote the play, Britain saw the emergence of a number of class struggles. In fact, Shaw was a...

Act I of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw introduces two major themes of the play, the nature of love and war and the differences between their reality and the false images promulgated of...

Shaw describes Raina's mother as follows: Catherine Petkoff, a woman over forty, imperiously energetic, with magnificent black hair and eyes, who might be a very splendid specimen of the wife of a...

We can go very deep into theme from Shaw's work of literature by talking about idealism and realism and how they exist in regards to both war and love, but the truth of the matter is that one can...

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...

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...

Raina embodies this topic, with her idealized perception of her fiance, Sergius, who is an officer leading a battle in Bulgaria. Raina sees Sergius as a sort of prince charming, knight in a shining...

Arms and the Man is an anti-war play wrapped within a romantic comedy. Its primary theme is the senselessness of war, and an important secondary theme is women’s burden in maintaining civil society...

The first act of Shaw's Arms and the Man sets the plot of the play in motion, and introduces us to the main characters and themes. In the first act, we encounter the two major areas of conflict...

Byronism is seen in the character of Major Saranoff, who is a shining example of Raina and her mother’s romanticized image of a hero. Sergius is often referred to as the Byronic hero or as the...

First, our glimpse through the window helps establish the remote and romantic nature of the place. This is not an urban world, but rather the fairy tale world of a beautiful princess in her tower....

At first, it might be tempting to conclude that the "real picture" differs greatly from Catherine's description of the battle. But if you read the text, you'll find that Catherine's description...

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...