But with the entrance of Bluntschli, a middle aged man, mundane looking soldier, we come to know the other side of heroism. Bluntschli has run away form the battle field which Raina’s ‘Byronic hero’ Sergius has won. From Bluntschli Raina come to know that her lover has carried a ‘Quixotic work’ by attacking his enemy recklessly for which he ought to be court-martialled.
Raina has long nourished romantic views of war. Her ideas of war are further shattered into pieces as she discovers with astonishment that even a soldier who is supposed to be invincible, can flee away from the battle field and can take refuge so unromantically in a lady’s bed room or can carry chocolates instead of ammunition and even prefers saving his life to sacrificing it in the name of heroism and patriotism.
Raina continues to hear what war is like and it becomes clear that Shaw is not talking about a particular war, but war in general. In fact, Shaw exploits Bluntschli as his mouthpiece so as to establish his ideas of war ands love and invert people’s notions concerning the gallantry in war and this he mocks at the banal patriotism of common people.
Although Raina has taken Sergius as a replica for patriotism, she has even set up a shrine to Sergius in her bed room, in fact neither Raina nor her mother Catherine who has urged Sergius to war, has no idea what a cavalry charge could be, unlike Bluntschli who described so vividly. Raina refuses to believe that Sergius leads his mean into what would have been a massacre. Therefore, it is no wonder that she would have become infuriated by Bluntschli’s prosaic remarks about soldier in general: “nine soldiers out of ten are born fools,” and the vulgar monosyllable with which he concludes his remark “the young ones carry pistols and cartridges, and the old ones grub.”
Shaw also illustrates the brutalities in a war as Bluntschli narrates in a horrific detail the fate of one of his friends burnt alive in a wood yard. There is no room for us to think that Bluntschli’s descriptions are ‘unrealistic’. Shaw himself on one occasion mentioned that the details he had included were taken from accounts of the eye-witness of recent wars in America and France.
Although Raina has learnt in time with the help of Bluntschli to see into the real nature of war, for Sergius and others was is like a befitting event where one could capture some medals or get promotion. Interestingly so false is the veneer of a brave hero Sergius that even Raina’s maidservant Louka dares to question his bravery – “I wonder are you really a brave man?”
Shaw in this play launches his criticism against romantic ideas of love as well. The superficiality of ‘higher love’ is shown in the Raina-Sergius relationship. Raina and Sergius become enthusiastic when they meet and address each other ebulliently in such terms as “my hero”, “my king” “my queen”. Raina later admits that she is always tempted to shock Sergius’s “propriety to scandalize the five senses out of him.” Raina even spies on Sergius only minutes after she confessed to him: “When I think of you I feel that I would never do base deeds.” Sergius ion the other hand is not also the torch-bearer of ‘higher-love’ as after having a superfluous conversation with Raina, he revels in flirting with Louka: he also defines higher love as “very fatiguing to keep up for length of time’. Louka wishes to prove her station through marriage so she courageously risks the entire future to get Sergius. She eavesdrops and exploits the secrets of Petkoff’s to spoil the Sergius-Raina relationship. On the other hand, Raina quite betrays with her fiancé by giving a picture of her own to Bluntschli. Sergius surrenders to Louka’s sex appeal but becomes enraged to find Raina deceitful and a flirt. The incongruous behavior of Sergius and Raina further proves the sham disposition of their much exalted ‘higher-love’. Therefore the much advertised romantic love of Sergius and Raina is easily defeated by Louka’s pert sex appeal.
In accordance with that when Sergius learns that Raina trifles with Bluntschli behind his back, jealousy grips him so much that he goes to that ludicrous extent of challenging Bluntschli in a duel. In fact both Raina and Sergius are sham romantics in their fake love relationship; they deceived each other a lot. But when according to Shaw’s plan Raina and Sergius learn to see into the nature of their romantic behavior, realism triumphs over romanticism. But the final abandoning of the romantic folly is a painful business as Sergius outbursts in despair and self-loathing: ‘oh! War, war, the dream of patriot and heroes,……… a hollow sham, like love.” Sergius also tells Raina that “our romance is shattered and life is farce.”
In fact, it is not life but romantic views of it that prove a farce. Farce is their gaudy love and preconceived notion of war.
Throughout his life Shaw waged a war against the superficial attitude to war. In Arms and the Man he wants to make people concerned of fake appearances of heroism in war and love. In that sense, Arms and the Man is an anti-romantic comedy, which persuades us to shun the romantic conceptions of love and gallantry in war.
