Arms and the Man

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...

Although Louka and Nicola are engaged, it seems that any future marriage between them would be a match made in hell. This is because they have radically different outlooks on life that are...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In Arms and the Man, author George Bernard Shaw portrays women as both static and dynamic. He mostly shows women as being one of two distinct types: they are either romantic and naïve or...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

The weapon is a cloak, and the speaker objects because it does not conform to her romantic ideas about warfare.Raina Petkoff, a young Bulgarian, makes this statement to a Serbian soldier who has...

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...

From the title we might expect an heroic account of war and the men who fight in it; a modern version of Virgil's Aeneid, perhaps. But given that this is a work by Shaw, the master of irony, such...

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....

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 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...

Raina and Louka are more different than alike. They are similar, however, in both being engaged to the "wrong" man because he happens to be of their own social class. Both are alike, too, in ending...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Arms and the Man takes its title from Virgil's Aeneid. The reference is somewhat ironic because of the difference between George Bernard Shaw's story and Virgil's story. Aeneid is a classical epic...

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...

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...

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...

In Act 1 of Arms and the Man, the subject of war is mainly portrayed through the perspectives of Raina and Captain Bluntschli. While Raina is enthralled with the idealized notion of the war hero,...

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...

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...

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 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...

Bluntschli is speaking to Raina in this scene as he classifies the two types of soldiers: "old ones and young ones." The young ones actually think that cartridges will save them in...

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...