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Compare the relationships of Raina and Bluntschli and Raina and Sergius from the first two acts.

Despite the serious questions raised in it about the nature of war and how literature and the arts are complicit in its romanticization, Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw is, in terms of plot, a traditional romantic comedy. 


At the beginning of the first act, we have Catherine Petkoff articulating a traditionally romantic viewpoint of both war and love, grounded in aristocratic Bulgarian culture and the artistic tradition of Europe. Raina's engagement to Sergius is situated in that contextual framework. Raina herself expresses that she has some doubts about that ideology, but as a young provincial woman has not really been exposed to any viable alternative modes of thinking or being. 


When Captain Bluntschli enters into her room, Raina is presented with a different view of war and love and slowly begins to realize that her engagement to Sergius is based on an illusion. We gradually see that Sergius too, in his relationship to Raina is simply filling out an externally created role rather than following his own heart. He does not wish simply to be the dashing, handsome soldier of the portrait and understands that Raina is engaged to an illusion, not to his real self.


The relationship between Captain Bluntschli and Raina is grounded not in illusion but in reality. Raina has seen Captain Bluntschli exhausted, frightened, and hungry and Captain Bluntschli has seen Raina in her private bedroom in her night clothes, i.e. her private rather than public self. Thus their relationship is founded in authenticity rather than imagination and convention. 

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