Arms and the Man is a comedy written by George Bernard Shaw. This is not an English Drama which I studied in Sankara, but which I taught one year after coming out of Sankara.
Not to a class, but to my senior who was also a friend.
Confusing?
Well that is the way it was. My friend was not able to clear his English even after two years.
Even though the text book which both of us studied was The Apple Cart, by Bernard Shaw, it had changed later. He requested me to teach the new one – The Arms and the Man.
I accepted his request and started studying the book.
It is the story of a lady (Raina) who lived in the war time during the 1880s in Europe.
She gets an unexpected guest or rather a refugee in her house. Ironically he is from the enemy camp.
She is initially contemptuous and also a little surprised at the fact that he keeps chocolates instead of bullets in his gun.
He is referred to as the Chocolate Cream Soldier in the book.
He says the war is so horrible that surviving is the first priority since there is no food for days together.
She is also forced to change her opinion about romance. One can say that what many of today’s generation’s (or rather all generations’ when they are young) view about the romantic ideas of living together are not realistic.
The moral of the story is one has a glorious picture of war as a competition or as a heroic act but the hard facts- the suffering does not attract general public attention.
Romance and War..... Both have to be viewed seriously.
Bernard Shaw was able to highlight this 125 years ago.
And as far as my friend is concerned, he had a taken a room just for this class. We sat together in the afternoons for a couple of months until his exams.
I am happy that he passed his English.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment