Class notes
Arms and a Man Analysis
- Course
- ENG110 (ENG110)
- Institution
- University Of Pretoria (UP)
Detailed description of Arms and A Man complete with character summaries and explanations of important passages.
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ENGLISH:PLAY ANALYSISArms and A Man – Bernard Shaw
Outcomes
- Explain and discuss the main ideas of the play
- Identify and discuss the techniques the playwright uses to convey these ideas to the audience
- Analyse extracts from the play in detail in terms of aspects such as
o Technique
o Character
o Plot
o Main ideas
Background
Setting
- Bulgaria, Eastern Europe
- Largely irrelevant to the themes which Shaw developed
- The house of a Bulgarian family
During
- 1885
- The war between Bulgaria and Serbia
War
- Bulgaria had been under Turkish rule and there was a very disturbed period when it ended
- Bulgarians needed the assistance and protection of Russia
o Hence the Bulgarian army is commanded by Russian officers
World where the characters lived
- Remote from the experience of almost everybody
- Colourful costumes worn to capture the attention of Shaw’s audience
Shaw’s intentions in the play
- Regrets that his play has wounded the susceptibilities of Bulgarian students in Berlin and Vienna
o Reminds the students that the business of the writer of a comedy to wound the susceptibilities of his
audience
§ Classical definition of his functions is “the chastening of morals by ridicule”
Shaw once said that people only take medicine if it is covered in sugar
- The comedy is the sugar but there are three bits of medicine Shaw gives us in his theatre of ideas
o Anti- war argument
o Uncomfortable consideration of class
o Difficulty of finding out who we really are in the face of ideals and pressures; economic and social
imposed by our society
Title taken from opening words of - Virgil's Aeneid, in Latin: Arma virumque cano
- Of Arms of A Man I sing
War
Serbo-Bulgarian War
- 24 – 28 November 1885
- 770 Serbs died
- 550 Bulgarians died
- 10000 wounded
General
Comedy
Obstacles
- Negotiate the difficulties created by social expectations around issues
o Class
, o Gender
o War
o Patriotism
§ How Shaw presents these difficult topics in a comedic way and engage with them in a safe
environment
Setting and stage directions
- When the characters enter or go off
- What main physical actions take place
- Setting
- Costumes
- Body language
- Tone of voice
Important
- There is no narrator telling the story and interpreting characters’ thoughts for you
o Instead there is a scene and characters
Themes
- War and marriage
o Interlinked
o Reality was very different from the illusions then held about both
o War
§ Men who took great risks in battle were celebrated as heroes
§ To go to war was regarded as a noble adventure and civilians could indulge in such beliefs
from a safe distance
§ Shaw was attacked for implying that
• Ordinary soldiers were usually concerned with simply surviving rather than becoming
heroes
o Bluntschli is not a heroic figure as he joined as a mercenary and for him war
is a regrettable necessity and not a chance to obtain glory
o Sergius is at first a traditional hero, leading the charge ‘like an operatic
tenor’.
§ Later Sergius resigns from the army having realised that warfare is far
from his ideals, that ‘soldiering is the coward’s art’
• That food was sometimes more important than ammunition
o Marriage
§ Treated more lightly
§ Shaw is serious in his intention to show us that romantic illusion often blind us to the truth
about marriage and thus lead to unhappiness
§ Raina holds her hero-worship of Sergius for a long time
• She has constructed a false self
o ‘the noble attitude and the thrilling voice’
o Takes Bluntschli to see through her
§ Sergius knows that he is acting the part of a romantic hero because it is expected of him
• He flirts with Louka telling her that ‘the higher love’ is a ‘very fatiguing thing to keep
up for any length of time’
§ By the end of the play, most of the characters have lost their illusions about themselves, each
other and about war and marriage
- The wealthy
o Pokes fun at the snobbery of people who have recently acquired wealth and believe themselves
superior as a result
§ Petkoffs are
• Very proud of their electric bell and library
• Concerned that Raina should not marry a mere tradesman like Bluntschli
- Hierarchy
o Servants have very different attitudes to their position
§ Nicola
• Behaves humbly
, • Cynical about his employers
• Secretly despises his employers
§ Louka
• Not prepared to humble herself
• Proud and ambitious
- War
o 2 views
- Heroic
§ Patriotic
§ Brave
§ Cavalry charge – “splendid” according to Catherine
- Realities of hardship
§ Unheroic deaths and wounds
§ Cruel
§ Bluntschli who spends 3 days under fire and has to flee for his life
• Prefers chocolate to bullets
o Realistically an chocolate save you when faced with an enemy?
§ Pathetic and laughable
o Calvary charge
§ Disastrous for the Serbs (Bluntschli)
§ Fortunate (Sergius and his regiment)
o Shaw de-romanticises war repeatedly
§ Horror and injuries
§ Cruelty of soldiers pursing fugitives and slaughtering them where they are found
• Image of Bluntschli’s friend burnt to death
• Raina’s response “How horrible”
o Also our response
- What makes a man a man and a woman a woman?
o Offered two main solutions
§ The romantic
• Initially
o Raina
o Sergius
§ Pursing the higher love
• Actual
o Bluntschli
§ Self-assessment as a romantic
• What nonsense! I assure you, my dear Major, my dear
Madame, the gracious young lady simply saved my life,
nothing else. She never cared two straws for me. Why, bless
my heart and soul, look at the young lady and look at me.
She, rich, young, beautiful, with her imagination full of fairy
princes and noble natures and cavalry charges and goodness
knows what! And I, a common-place Swiss soldier who
hardly knows what a decent life is after fifteen years of
barracks and battles—a vagabond—a man who has spoiled
all his chances in life through an incurably romantic
disposition—a man—
•
§ In Act 1 – Raina is dreaming of romance, using a format that is used
by literature and the pressures imposed by society
§ When Raina is faced by a man who takes her seriously just as she is,
not when she is play acting. She reveals her realistic side
o Louka
§ Dreaming of marrying the person she loves even at all costs
§ The realist
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