Consider Arms and the Man as an anti-war play

Shaw's Arms and the Man is an anti-war play because, in the play, he exposes the unsoundness of the romantic view of war. There was a popular view that war is a romantic game that gives a man the opportunity to display his heroism, and a soldier is a superman, a great hero, above all weaknesses. The soldier who takes the biggest risks in war is the greatest hero. But Shaw laughs at the romantic views about war and soldiering in Arms and the Man.

Raina, Catherine, and Sergius have romantic conceptions of war. Sergius wins the battle of Slivnitza, leading a cavalry charge against a battery of machine guns. Catherine describes the cavalry charge as a 'splendid' thing. She describes it in her romantic light: the brave Bulgarians, with their swords and eyes flashing, rushed down upon their enemies like an avalanche and scattered the helpless Serbians and their Austrian officers like chaff before the wind. Similarly, Raina becomes wild with joy. She feels that her heroic ideas about Sergius have been proven true. She worships his portrait like a priestess and addresses it as the hero of her soul.

Anti-war

Soon afterwards, Raina comes into close contact with the realities of war when Bluntschli suddenly bursts into her bedroom. He is in a very helpless condition. He is being chased by the Bulgarian soldiers. If they find him, they will kill him. He is very hungry. He has passed forty-eight sleepless hours. Such is the picture of the reality of war. He tells her soldiers that they are afraid to die and that it is their duty to live as long as they can. When the Russian officer is about to enter her bedroom, Bluntschli tells her that "nine soldiers, out of ten, are born fools." It is proved true because the Russian officer fails to discover Bluntschli, who was behind the curtain. He even does not notice the pistol lying on the ottoman. Here Shaw hints that a soldier is not a superman but subject to all the frailties of human nature.

Bluntschli is a professional soldier through whom Shaw demolishes conventional ideas about war and soldiering. He frankly tells Raina that cartridges are of no use to a soldier on the battlefield. From his experience, he has learned that food is more useful to a fighting soldier than any weapons of war because food provides sufficient strength to fight heroically. A soldier cannot show his valor if he remains hungry. Here, Shaw means that man is greater than his arms, and a soldier is none but a man, and like every man, he is subject to hunger. Soldiers need arms to bring the enemies under control, but they require adequate food to get the strength to operate the arms.

Bluntschli again tells Raina about the reality of the cavalry charge. He tells her that the leader of the cavalry charge was not like a real hero. He led the charge like an utter fool. He tried to show his bravery but did not realize that if the Serbians had the right kind of ammunition in their machine guns, the Bulgarians could be massacred. He says that while advancing towards the battery of machine guns, Sergius looked like the ideal romantic hero of an opera. In leading the cavalry charge, he acts like Don Quixote, who attacked a windmill, taking it for a giant.

Sergius himself has learned the reality of war. To display bravery is the only thing that matters to him. So, ignoring the command of the Russian officer and violating the military rules, he led the cavalry charge at his own responsibility. But reality begins to prevail over him when he sees that two Cossack colonels were promoted to major-generals, though they lost the battle following the rules of military warfare strictly, but he was discredited by the Russian officers instead of being promoted because he won the battle the wrong way. Ultimately, he realizes that soldiering is the coward's art of attacking enemies when they are weaker and keeping them at a safe distance when they are stronger. When Bluntschli narrates the horror of war, Sergius' romance is completely shattered, and he considers war a fraud, a hollow sham.

Shaw exposes the follies of the romantic notion of war through Bluntschli. He has no romantic illusions about war. He takes soldiering as a profession. He said, "I fight when I have to, and I am very glad to get out of it when I haven't to." He does not take fighting as amusement. He is practical-minded.

Thus, Shaw in Arms and the Man expresses his anti-romantic and unconventional attitude towards war and soldiering. His position is against the conventional romantic conceptions of war and soldiering. So it is an anti-war play.