Arms and the Man as an Anti-romantic and anti war play

Md. Al Amin

George Bernard Shaw a Fabian socialist, occupies a significant position in the history of English literature as an unconventional dramatist. Being influenced by Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright he took his pen to write dramas to satirize the rotten attitudes, convention and manners of the society. Bernard Shaw created a new kind of play. The new drama giving up all traditional conventions of dramatic technique. Shaw wrote fifty three plays and all his plays are comedies. Arms and the Man is the most popular and successful staged drama of Shaw. It is also an anti- romantic comedy because it exposes the folly cowardice of soldier’s shatters the romantic illusions about war and attacks severely romantic and sentimental love.

Bernard Shaw himself calls Arms and the Man an anti-romantic comedy. Shaw himself was anti-romantic by nature. The principle objection raised by Shaw against romantic literature is that it deals with imagery ideas and artificial emotions. So, Shaw decidedly and intentionally wrote the play Arms and the man in his innovative design of anti-romantic comedy.

In Arms and the Man, Shaw wittily, humorously and critically exposes the hollowness of romantic and emotional concept of war love and marriage. At the very beginning, we find that Raina, the heroine of the drama loves Surgius romantically. Her joys know no bounds hearing the news that Surgius led the Bulgarian towards victory. We find Raina harboring idealistic and extravagant nations of war and also about the heroism of her fiancé, Sergius. She says:

I am so happy! so proud

She addresses the portrait of Sergius murmuring “my hero, my hero”. Raina thinks that war seems to be an opportunity for man to display their heroism and Sergius seems to be a splendid hero. A critic comments on this romantic ecstasy of Raina that– “A romantic girls’ romantic view of life”. But very soon this romantic illusion of Raina is shattered by Bluntschli, a fugitive Swiss soldier. Knowing nothing about the romance between Sergius and Raina. Bluntschli exposes to Raina the fact of Sergius foolish performance on the battlefield. Bluntschli opens the eyes of Raina and brings her down into worth from her romantic fantasy world.

Raina who considered Sergius a great hero, now finds it is her mere illusion. She also becomes sympathetic at the sight of the miserable condition of captain Bluntschli. She learns from Bluntschli that chocolates were more important for a soldier on the battle field than cartridges. When she finds Bluntschli eating chocolate creams, greedily, she out of fun calls him chocolate cream soldier. It is Bluntschli who makes her realize that a soldier is not a superman. A soldier is a human being, subject to all weakness of human nature including fear of death. Bluntschli, the mouth speaker of the dramatist, with his anti-romantic attitudes towards war and life attract the heart of Raina.

Sergius who is full of vanity and pride for winning on accidental battle also gets disillusioned about war. In spite of his apparent success as a Soldier, he is criticized by his senior official and there by is promotion. He resigns his job being frustrated about the profession and empresses his realization to Mrs. Catherine Petkoff.

In the same manner, Shaw ridicules and satirizes the romantic attitude of love in Arms and the man. In the play the romantic lovers are like just butterflies sucking honey from flower to flower. So even being betrothed to Sergius, Raina put a signed photograph on the pocket of the coat given to Bluntschli for his realistic and humanistic attitude to life and for that reason she gave the photograph as a souvenir for her love to her chocolate cream soldier. Similarly Sergius show his strange fickleness by shifting his romantic feeling for Raina to Louka, a maid servant in Raina’s family. Thus Shaw shows the hollowness of romantic love between Bluntschli and Raina upholds Shaw’s view of ideal marriage and love.

In conclusion, we may say that Arms and the Man is an Anti-romantic comedy which admits of no controversy. The dramatist is in doubted successful in his purpose of satirizing romantic notions about war and love in his play Arms and the Man.