Arms and the Man: Act 3 Summary & Analysis

Bluntschli is the only industrious figure in a room full of people watching, lazing around, and daydreaming. Sergius is somewhat baffled by Bluntschli’s ability, and Major Petkoff is basically content to let someone else do his work for him. These are not the patriotic Bulgarian heroes Raina spoke of in Act 1. Raina has resumed her dreamy romantic posturing, staring out the window and holding a novel in her lap without reading it.

Sergius’s youth and arrogance is on full display in this exchange. He has already noted that Bluntschli is more adept than him with writing orders, but still disdains having to assist Bluntschli.

Once again Nicola is used as a kind of pawn in Catherine’s dishonest scheming. The exchange following his exit demonstrates how excessively and comfortably the Petkoff’s live. While Nicola silently agrees to help Catherine lie to her husband, they sit in a room and bet jewels and horses on the outcome. It is an overt moment of criticism of the life of the upper class: frivolous and almost grotesquely careless with money, even as others suffer through difficult and demeaning labor to make a living.

Sergius and Bluntschli are two opposing heroes: Sergius, the ridiculous romantic hero, inept in war, and Bluntschli, a kind of hero-realist, who sees Sergius for what he is, and whose competency far outstrips the young and foolish Sergius. A duel between the two of them would most certainly end poorly for Sergius, but Raina clings to her romantic notions, and idealizes Sergius.

Bluntschli informs Raina that the reality of being a soldier is that you often have to put your life in the hands of others. This realism clashes with Raina’s notion of what a soldier should be—a heroic individual—and she decries Bluntschli’s remarks as base and unworthy. He seems to see through her act—he does not believe her, and seems to know she is concealing her authentic self from him.

Raina finally admits that it is all an act—she is not so frivolous and dreamy as she seems. By refusing to believe the act, Bluntschli, in a way, becomes the first person who has ever believed in the “real” Raina, who has ever taken her seriously. Raina is at ease with him because she can finally be herself, and doesn’t need to put on a performance or fill a role. What’s more, Bluntschli doesn’t condemn her for her romantic posturing. He admires her for it, seemingly incorporating this element of her personality into her complex identity.

Raina becomes distraught again, however, when she learns that the jig may be up. Though she appreciates that Bluntschli can see her for who she is, she still clings to the identity she’s created for her credulous family. She still cares deeply about her family seeing her a certain way.

Bluntschli is as businesslike and unfeeling as Raina is emotional and romantic. He does not even seem to feel sorrow for his dead father, for he is only concerned about the business side of things: he must take over his father’s hotels. Louka continues to undermine her upper class employers whom she resents so much. She cuts down Bluntschli, knowing Raina loves him, and hints at Sergius’s infidelity.

Louka turns from ridiculing the upper class to ridiculing Nicola, a complacent member of the working class whom she believes is complicit in the perpetuation of class inequality. She refuses to accept that she should show more deference to the Petkoffs, and denies that Nicola “made her into a woman” just by teaching her how to act as a servant. Louka (correctly, we imagine) guesses that Nicola would rather serve her than marry her, for serving is his only calling.

Sergius finally recognizes that the Byronic, romantic worship of the courageous warrior is misleading: for bravery in battle is something a bulldog is capable of. Louka reframes courage so that it speaks to the contentious issue of 18th century class relations: bravery is feeling free to love anyone in a society that divides people sharply into categories based on their wealth and status. Her comment is decidedly socialist and likely reflects Shaw’s personal philosophy.

Sergius claims to be brave in this way, but his declaration of his enduring love for Raina is a dishonest evasion, and the audience can see he is too much of a coward to admit he loves Louka. Louka points out to him that if he is capable of dishonesty so is Raina. Louka, more than anyone else, understands how complex a person’s identity is. Her realism allows her to reason that everyone is dishonest to some degree, and that everyone is capable of treachery. Sergius and Raina, in contrast, can sense that they themselves don’t fit the roles they’ve each separately created for themselves, but don’t realize that nobody else fits in their own roles either.

Sergius toys with the notion of committing to Louka, but tellingly he speaks in hypotheticals, and uses strange, equivocal language. Despite his declaration that he will be courageous, he is still carefully hedging his bet and posturing in a certain way. He is not yet acting authentically.

Raina is finally forced into a situation where she must come clean about her feelings for Bluntschli. Bluntschli is now the one concealing his true feelings, by making an obscure comment that he is potentially married. Yet Bluntschli’s evasion makes Raina lets down her guard and her authentic emotion shows through.

The romantic façade begins to break down entirely. Our romantic hero Sergius calls love and war “hollow shams,” a directly anti-romanticist sentiment. And Raina reveals she has seen Sergius and Louka embracing in the garden. The “true love” between Raina and Sergius is finally revealed: it is superficial, immature and artificial.

Sergius is still a showoff, however, and launches into a grandiose speech. His point is valid, however: Bluntschli is so carefully controlled and so unemotional he resembles a machine more than a man. He has been concealing his feelings just as everyone else has. Raina recognizes that her and Sergius’s posturing has been essentially immature—indeed the action resembles a kind of schoolyard drama, with Louka listening at the door.

Sergius has been taught that servants are below him, and when Louka declares that she and Sergius are in love, he cannot help but feel ashamed. He denies this, however, declaring he is “not ashamed” even though he has just betrayed his embarrassment. Even if he does not feel courageous he is determined, as always, to seem courageous.

Everyone immediately reverts back to a careful performance when Major Petkoff enters. But circumstance forces them to explain the situation. Though people do not often volunteer to reveal their secrets and true feelings, circumstance often forces them to in this play. We get the sense that reality will break through idealism and Romanticism whether we like it or not.

Sergius finally accepts his relationship with Louka, but only after Louka basically traps him with a semantic technicality. Once again it seems that reality will always draw out a person’s true nature, even if he or she does not deliberately reveal this nature.

It is revealed that Bluntschli, in his own idealistic cognitive error, has assumed that Raina is only a teenager. He has constructed her in an idealized way. Romantic literature often equates dreaminess and beauty with youth, and Bluntschli has done just that. Raina corrects his mistake: their roles are reversed. She now corrects his idealistic preconceptions, making clear that she can be beautiful, energetic and dreamy without being a child. Bluntschli accepts this,accepts the reality of her, and immediately treats her “seriously” by asking to court her.

Though Bluntschli offers up the fact of his wealth as evidence he would be a good husband, Raina makes clear that she fell in love with a tattered soldier, and her affection will not be “bought.” She is done conforming to upper class expectations. Her relationship with Bluntschli represents a kind of transgression of expectations, a union of “real love” rather than “true love.” Meanwhile, Sergius, the man held up as a heroic model for all men through the play, now holds up the realist Bluntschli as the man who should actually be admired. And in so doing the Romantic ideals of the play are fully demolished, as those who embodied them have themselves abandoned them in favor of a new, more realistic and more authentic way of seeing and being in the world that emphasizes connections between people as opposed to roles within ideals or classes.