Special Sub-Topic: Arms and the Man Click Here To Play: Arms and the Man

The setting of the play is in idyllic Bulgaria where there is a war going on between the natives and the Serbs. The hero, Captain Bluntschli, a professional soldier, joined the Serbian army. What is his nationality?

Swiss. Bluntschli joined the Serbian army instead of the Bulgarian because Serbia "came first on the road from Switzerland".

In the beginning of the play the heroine Raina Petkoff is engaged to Sergius Saranoff who wins a battle in a wrong way. He leads a cavalry charge against whom?

Artillery. Sergius foolishly leads this cavalry charge, but luckily for him the artillery has no ammunition and Sergius gets an easy victory.

Bluntschli compares Sergius to which famous literary character while describing the great cavalry charge to Raina?

Don Quixote. When Bluntschli takes refuge in Raina's bedroom he calls Sergius 'Don Quixote', charging at the windmills with flashing eyes.

In Bluntsclhi's famous iconoclastic dialogue to Raina he calls nine out of ten soldiers to be what?

coward. Bluntschli further tells Raina that old soldiers carry food instead of cartridges to the battlefield.

Major Petkoff calls his wife's habit of washing her throat every day 'abominable'. He says that to keep up his social position he is willing to bathe once every month.

f. Major Petkoff says to his wife that his father lived to be 98 as he never took a bath in his life. So once a week is enough for him. He blames the English from whom this habit of washing oneself every day originates.

Louka, the maid, is engaged to Nicola, the man-servant. He has been called 'ablest man in Bulgaria' by which of the characters?

Bluntschli. Bluntschli was so impressed with Nicola's practical bent of mind that he wanted to make Nicola a manager in one of his hotels, if only he could speak German and French.

Raina blames Louka for breaking the ornament she had prepared for the ice pudding.

f. It was Nicola who was blamed. But Raina really did not make any ice-pudding, or its ornament. She just lied to her father and Sergius about it.

Bluntschli mistook Raina's age and called her a school-girl of seventeen. What was revealed to be her real age?

23. Bluntschli, who is a prosaic soldier, is found to be very inexperienced when it comes to women. So he does not realize that Raina is a lady and not a child.

Raina and her mother had sent off Bluntscli in an old coat of Petkoff. In the pocket of the coat Raina had put something for Bluntscli. What was it?

A signed portrait. Bluntschli never found it. For the purpose of safe-keeping, he had pawned the coat.

The play is rounded off with two marriages. Raina and Bluntschli, and Louka and Sergius. Earlier in the play only one character had predicted Raina's marriage to Bluntscli, though she was engaged to Sergius. Who was it?

Louka. Only Louka realized that Raina was keeping up a charade with Sergius while she had fallen for Bluntscli.