INTRODUCTION

• Arms and the Man is a famous comedy written by George

Bernard Shaw. This play was produced on April 21st, 1894
and was first published in 1898 in Shaw’s collection of
plays: “Pleasant and Unpleasant” Volume.
• It is a humorous play and a social satire that presents a
realistic account of war and shows how foolish it is to
idealize war as something noble. It is also a satire on
romantic and unrealistic notions of love.
• The title of the play comes from the opening words of
Virgil’s Aeneid, the Roman epic which glorifies war and
heroic deeds of those who participate in war. So the title
should be looked at ironically as the play is a satire on
foolishness of glorifying something as terrible as war.
STRUCTURE AND PLOT
CONSTRUCTION
 PLOT STRUCTURE
•Exposition: Act 1 is in the nature of exposition as it introduces us
to the principal characters of the play. Raina, Catherine, Louka and
Bluntschli are introduced directly whereas Serigus and Major
Petkoff are introduced indirectly. Two themes are also introduced
which are war and love.
•Rising Action: In Act 2, Bluntschli arrives back at the Petkoff estate
to return the coat.
•Climax: In Act 3, Bluntschli and Raina reveals their love to each
other and Louka and Serigus admits to their affair.
•Falling Action: Bluntschli makes a formal offer of marriage to Raina
who accepts it and Serigus offers marriage to Louka who also
accepts it.
•Conclusion: In Act 3, the complications are resolved and the play
is brought to a satisfactory conclusion as the main characters have
become wise enough to admit who they really love. The play ends
with Raina getting engage to Bluntschli and Louka to Serigus.
PLOT CONSTRUCTION
THEMES
 THEME OF HEROISM
Heroism :A hero is usually recognized in a work of literature
as someone with great courage and strength
• Sergius is painted as a hero—he led a successful cavalry
charge, displaying immense (in fact foolhardy) bravery.
•He is physically strong, courageous, and handsome. He thus
embodies a very traditional kind of heroism.
•Though Raina and her mother fawn over Sergius, in part
because Raina is betrothed to him, others find him more of a
clown than a hero.
•Bluntschli is a kind of “anti-hero.”
•He is dubbed by Raina to be the “chocolate cream soldier”
• He is older, more modest looking, and doesn’t believe courage
is a virtue.
•But by the end of the play he is revealed to be both a better
soldier and a far more desirable husband than Sergius, and
wins Raina’s affections.
The question of heroism is a rich and diverse one.
☆What do heroes mean to culture?
☆Who ought to be a hero?
☆And what of literary heroes?— literary Romanticism no
longer seemed fit to make sense of or address
contemporary human problems.
☆The Byronic, romantic hero had been forsaken—what
would the new literary heroes look like?
 THEME OF CLASS
Shaw, a socialist and activist, seeks to undermine the significance of
class divisions in his play.
• The play persistently points out that division between the classes is
unethical and unjust.
The social station of the characters in the play is one of the dynamics that
becomes most pronounced by its end.
• Louka is initially described as "so defiant that her servility to Raina is
almost insolent," but she does what she needs to do.
• "Did you find ... that the men whose fathers are poor ... were any less
brave than the men who are rich?" Sergius responds, "Not a bit."
• Shaw's point is that social class and money have little to do with bravery.
• “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 is a part
of it, is on the balcony, gazing at the snowy Balkans. She is covered by a
long mantle of furs, worth, on a moderate estimate, about three times the
furniture of the room“
• “Sergius leads Raina forward with splendid gallantry as if she
were a queen. When they come to the table, she turns to him
with a bend of the head; he bows; and thus, they separate, he
coming to his place, and she going behind her father’s chair."
• “You have the soul of a servant, Nicola."
• “I’ve no ammunition. What use are cartridges in battle? I
always carry chocolate instead, and I finished the last cake of
that yesterday.“
• "Well, it came into my head just as he was holding me in his
arms and looking into my eyes, that perhaps we only had our
heroic idea because we are so fond of reading Byron and
Pushkin and because we were so delighted with the opera that
season at Bucharest. Real life is so seldom like that—indeed
never, as far as I knew it then."
SYMBOLS
LIBRARY
* A sign of status for the Bulgarian families.
* The Petkoffs brag about their library to make themselves
seem as refined as their Russian enemies.
* The library is considered a luxury among all Bulgarians.
* The library turns out to be only a small room with dusty
volumes of books scattered on the shelves.
* It symbolizes Petkoffs’ obsession of having a fine taste and
seemingly being more civilized and refined.
* In reality both the family and their library are far off from
their ideals.
PETKOFFS COAT
Catherine and Raina lend Bluntschli Major Petkoff’s coat to escape the
estate in the fall, under cover of darkness.
The coat is a symbol of the various instances of deception around which
the novel unfolds.
Bluntschli brings the coat back to the Petkoff’s without realizing that
Raina has left an inscribed picture of herself in its pocket, thus indicating
to anyone who might see it that she loves Bluntschli despite being
engaged to Sergius.
The coat literally hides Raina’s love for Bluntschli, and this love is only
revealed once Raina’s photograph is removed from the coat. Petkoff’s
cannot find the coat in his closet until Nicola, on Catherine’s urging,
places the coat there after Bluntschli’s return in an attempt to cover up
the story.
Major Petkoff is as sure the coat is not in his closet as he is that nothing
is the matter between Raina, Bluntschli, and Sergius in that moment.
When Nicola produces the coat, the turmoil between the characters is
revealed, and Major Petkoff is just as shocked at both revelations
CHOCOLATE CREAM
Raina keeps candies, including chocolate creams, in her bedroom.
She appears not to like chocolate creams.
But Bluntschli loves them she calls him “the chocolate cream
soldier.”
Chocolate creams are a symbol of delicacy and high society, as well
as a symbol of youthfulness.
However, Bluntschli’s willingness to stuff them in his pockets in
place of ammunition indicates that they are also a symbol of maturity
and knowledge.
Bluntschli knows how difficult war is. He is a veteran, not a rookie.
Thus the creams are over-determined in the play, meaning there is
no single significance that can be placed on them.
This is similar to how Raina and Bluntschli are neither paragons of
total good nor total evil, but complex humans who behave practically
as best they can.
• Reference
• In Act 1, Bluntschli says,

“I’ve no ammunition. What use are cartridges in battle? I always

carry chocolate instead. “

• Captain Bluntschli upends Raina’s and audience’s

assumptions about war.
• Instead of focusing on the ability to harm enemy soldiers, he
focuses on the ability to survive.
• Grateful to him for telling her information, Raina offers
Bluntschli some of her chocolates.