Books like Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man is Bernard Shaw’s first great play. It is filled with witty and amusing dialogue, a diverting and well-constructed plot, and charming, well differentiated characters. A perfect light comedy designed to amuse the most jaded audience, it is also a deadly serious play that launches a fierce attack on one of the most destructive beliefs of Shaw’s (and any other) time: that war is heroic and magnificent, and that the gallant soldier is the supreme icon of manhood, something to be esteemed and admired.The play, set during the Serbian-Bulgarian War of 1885, is the story of the encounter between Raina, a Bulgarian maiden engaged to the young officer Sergius, and the veteran Captain Buntschli, a Swiss mercenary in the pay of the Serbians, who escapes capture after a battle by hiding out in Raina’s bedroom. Frightened at first, Raina soon views the captain with contempt, compared to her brave fiancee, for he seems fearful and not at all professional: for example, he carries chocolate in his ammunition bag. (“You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes.” Buntschli says. “The young ones carry pistols and cartridges ; the old ones, grub.”) Soon the Swiss captain rejoins his regiment, Sergius returns from the war, and then—following Captain Buntschli’s unexpected return—Raina begins to realize that perhaps her “chocolate soldier” (as she fondly calls him) may be the best man after all.I’ll end with two passages from the first act. In the first, Raina’s mother Catherine describes Sergius’ heroic charge of the enemy battery. In the second, Captain Buntschli describes the same event from the enemy point of view.\ CATHARINE:”Sergius is the hero of the hour, the idol of the regiment...You cant guess how splendid it is. A cavalry charge ! think of that ! He defied our Russian commanders, acted without orders, led a charge on his own responsibility headed it himself, was the first man to sweep through their guns. Cant you see it, Raina : our gallant splendid Bulgarians with their swords and eyes flashing, thundering down like an avalanche and scattering the wretched Servians and their dandified Austrian officers like chaff...Oh, if you have a drop of Bulgarian blood in your veins, you will worship him when he comes back.” CAPTAIN BUNTSCHLI: “He did it like an operatic tenor, a regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting his war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We nearly burst with laughter at him; but when the sergeant ran up as white as a sheet, and told us theyd sent us the wrong cartridges, and that we couldn’t fire a shot for the next ten minutes, we laughed at the other side of our mouths. I never felt so sick in my life; though Ive been in one or two very tight places. And I hadnt even a revolver cartridge, nothing but chocolate. We'd no bayonets, nothing. Of course, they just cut us to bits. And there was Don Quixote flourishing like a drum major, thinking he'd done the cleverest thing ever known, whereas he ought to be courtmartialled for it. Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, that man must be the very maddest. He and his regiment simply committed suicide only the pistol missed fire: that’s all.”\ \