Literature + Romantic poetry

Introduction:

The title of Arms and The Man is depict the martial exploits and adventures of war. But Shaw does not look at war with the same eyes. He does not write this drama to speak about the glories of war. He rather proves that heroism and utter foolishness do not lie far apart.

Background:

The play, written in 1894, takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. The title “Arms and the Man” derives from the opening lines of the popular epic of Virgil, “Aeneid” : “I sing of Arms and the Man” However, as Virgil highly praises war as described by its heroes, Shaw’s aim in writing “Arms and the Man” is to provide a more realistic picture of war and to remove all pretensions of the nobility from war.

Overview:

Arms and the Man takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian war. Raina Petkoff, a wealthy young woman with a taste for melodrama, is engaged to Sergius Saranoff, a dashing major in the Bulgarian army. On the night of her fiance’s triumph on the battlefield, a soldier in the Serbian army -- a Swiss professional, with no national interest -- bursts into her bedroom, and begs her to hide him so that he will not be killed. Raina complies, though she thinks the man a coward, especially when he tells her that he carries chocolates instead of pistol cartridges. Raina’s mother, imperious social climber Catherine, helps her smuggle the soldier away, but not before Raina has lost a bit of her heart to this pathetic specimen. When the menfolk return from war, Raina prepares to worship her victorious Sergius… until Captain Bluntschli, her “chocolate cream soldier”, appears to return a borrowed housecoat, and is invited to stay -- and incidentally, to help with regimental transport -- by hospitable Major Petkoff. Meanwhile, noble Sergius, disgusted with the practical realities of war, is more interested in flirting with Louka, the defiant housemaid who scorns to have “the soul of a servant.” As the Petkoff family, their servants, and the soldier, himself, struggle to hold on to their secrets and preserve their ideals, they are forced to question their romantic notions about social class, identity, war, and love. George Orwell once called Shaw's Arms and the Man "the wittiest play he ever wrote... and in spite of being a very light comedy, the most telling."

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