Bluntschli is the most fascinating, the most interesting, character in “Arms and the Man”. He is the “hero” and the central figure in the play and keeps up the movement of the plot throughout. He is the heart and life of the play. His arrival in Raina’s bedroom in Act I starts the action of the play, his second visit in Act II introduces the principal complication, and in Act III he resolves the complication to a satisfactory conclusion. “Arms and the Man” would disintegrate, if Bluntschli is taken out of it. As one critic puts it, he is a masterpiece of comic characterization, and the source of fun and humour in the play. He keeps the readers laughing by his sparking wit and humour and by his shrewd exposure of the folly of others.

Bluntschli is also a typical Shavian hero. He stands in sharp contrast to Sergius. He has not heroic but common-place courage; he is a ‘hero’ not because he faces bullets but because he faces facts about war and soldiery, about love and marriage, about human nature in general. Like a typical Shavian hero. Bluntschli acts upon instinct, and not according to social codes and convention. Instinctively, he runs away from the field, enters Raina’s room, and in defiance of all codes of chivalrous and gentlemanly conduct uses Raina’s dress as his shield. When hungry, he demands chocolate, and goes to sleep.

However, the Shavian hero is neither a coward nor sensual. He is hard-working, with an extra-ordinary capacity for sustained work. He has more than average vitality, and sound commonsense enables him to see the reality and overcome temptations and passions and Bluntschli enjoys all these qualities. His conduct is natural, and is noble and generous. He is shrewd and can see through things at once. Thus he at once realizes the problem of forage and arranges the dispatch of the regiment, within minutes. Like Caesar in “Caesar and Cleopatra”, he, too, may indulge in the pleasures of love and sex, but at the call of business he rises above such human weaknesses. Just as Caesar leaves Cleopatra and Egypt at the call of Rome, Bluntschli leaves Raina when he remembers his business and at once departs, promising to return at five on Tuesday evening. All are amazed at this human-machine and Sergius exclaims:

Bluntschli combines levity with seriousness; his laughter has a serious purpose. He demolishes the romantic ideals of both Sergius and Raina. In this respect, he is the mouthpiece of Shaw. He expresses the dramatist’s views on war and love.

He shows the truth about the war. War is something horrible and brutal. It may become necessary at times, but no songs should be sung to its glory.

It is through Bluntschli that Shaw exposes that soldiers are not noble heroes as Raina considers them to be, but cowards who run away from the field to save their skins.


Through Bluntschli Shaw humorously presents soldiers as ordinary creatures of flesh and blood, who suffer from hunger and fatigue, need food and rest, and they fight only because they must.

It is he, who tells the truth that on the war-front food is more important than ammunition.

He makes Raina see the truth about Sergius’ cavalry charge, and so punctures not only her knowledge of Sergius, as well as of her own self.


He is a realist, shrewd and practical, and serves as a foil to Sergius and Raina while Sergius is stupid, boastful and romantic to the core. He lacks practical ability, and experience of real life.

Shaw satirizes that even Bluntschli, the apostle of realism, also has a romantic side to his nature. The realist Bluntschli has an, “incurably romantic disposition”, that he, too, “is a romantic idiot”, like Sergius and Raina. He himself dwells on his romantic traits. He ran away twice from home when he was a boy, went into the army instead of his father’s business, and climbed the balcony of the house, when a man of sense would have dived into a cellar. Further, he came back sneaking to have another look at the lady, and he takes her to be a school-girl of seventeen, while she is in reality a woman of twenty-three. With all his enormous wealth inherited so very suddenly, he seems to be an emperor of fairyland who ultimately offers to marry the fairy princess.

Sergius cannot be the hero of the play, for he is exposed and ridiculed by the end of the play. The roles of the two men are reversed. The shabby fugitive marries Raina, the heroine of the play, and Sergius her maid-servant.

However, since in the drama, the dramatist has extolled man, and not arms, Bluntschli may be taken to be the sort of man that would meet the dramatist’s approval. He is the representative of average humanity; he is what Shaw would like Man to be.