help needed with arms and the man//macbeth

[aquafairy]

Hey!!
I am a new member here & hope to get help from u people.I need answers to a few questions related to arms andthe man by bernard shaw & macbeth..
Arms and the man
1)Compare and contrast the character of Sergius with Bluntchli
2)Write a character sketch of Raina
macbeth
1)Compare and contrats between Banquo and Macbeth

I really hope that some1 helps me find answers 2 these questions soon..
Thanks

[Alexei]

Both of them are brave and ambitious. Macbeth becomes the Thane of Cawdor and is prompted by the witches' prophesy and his wife's goading to kill Duncan and become king of Scotland. Unlike Macbeth, Banquo does not act to fulfill these prophecies, relying on his better judgement and morals instead. Nevertheless, true to the witches' word, he becomes the father of kings. These are the basics and if you want some more you should visit these sites:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-65.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/
http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/macbeth/

Unfortunately I am incapable of helping you with your others question, but may be you could find some information for them in the sites, whom urls I have given you for Macbeth.

[aquafairy]

thanks..that really helps..but somehow i'm not getting the required info on arms and the man.

[Dipen Guha]

Bluntschli's views on soldering are realistic and based on his experiences. He believes that soldiers fight for money. Patriotism is a vague conviction that has little to do in acting upon a militant soldier. He himself fought for the Serbs, because from Switzerland he came first to Serbia. It is natural that a soldier fears to die, and takes every possible safety to go unharmed. A soldier suffers from want of food and sleep. Chocolates that implies subsistence is more important than cartridges.
Bluntschli's views on cavalry soldering is, all the more, interesting. In a cavalry charge, experienced soldiers mach together behind their commander. They know that they are running to the mouth of cannons. Bluntschli opines that Sergius's soldering at Slivnitza was unprofessional. He threw a whole regiment of cavalry on a battery of machine-guns with dead certainity that if the guns went off, all his men and horses would be massacred. His military rash was quixotic, if not suicidal.
Sergius's views on soldering undergo shiftings. Before he joins the war, his views are idealistic. He holds that men fight because they are heroes and that the soldiers who take the biggest risks win the greast glory. His cavalry charge at Slivnitza was prompted by this idealistic notion. But, his ideakistic notion suffers a ravage by the denial of his promotion.Then Sergius develops a mind of a critic. Now, he deduces "soldiering is the coward's art of attacking mercilelssly...".Towards the close of the play, Sergius's views have another round of shifting. When he hears from Bluntschli that his friend Stolz with six men were burnt alive, he cries out cynically, "Oh, war! War! the dreams of patriots and heroes!" Though Sergius and Bluntschli stand as the sharp antithesis to each other reversal of values in case of Sergius bring the protagonists in synchronism
Essayed by Dipen Guha

[Dipen Guha]

Raina Petkoff is the heroine of the play"Arms and the Man". She is a young lady blessed with graceful delicacy, feminine beauty, proud of her family heritage and possessed with romantic illusions of love, marriage and war. Her extensive bent for Puskin and Byron has taken her to a lofty height of idealism. So she lives in the world of fairies and airies. She is betrothed to Major Sergius Saranoff, whom she looks upon as an icon of power, prowess and position. In Act-I, when news comes that Sergius has come out victorious in his cavalry charge aginst the Serbs, we find that she bursts into boisterous raptures, though the truth is that Sergius took a rash enterprise with an aid of flourishing sword against a battery of cannons. Hence Raina finds a hero in an overpowering soldier. When Raina, looking at the portrait of Sergius remarks,"He is as noble as he looks", her romantic illusions regarding militant harness come to light. As a votary submits herself to some deity, Raina too submits to some "medieval knight", and not to one flesh and blood. Naturally, she is prone to infatuation, and not love in true sense of the term. Her being fianced with Sergius is nourished, nursed and nurtured with reverence.
But, with the advent of the mid-night intruder(Bluntschli) the heroine of the play receives a rock in her convictions. The fugitive puts Raina under threat with a gun in order to be sheltered under her apron. In course of their conversation, we find some delicate and sensitive areas of her character. For example, when Bluntschli doubts his safety in the house of the Petkoffs, Raina, in a supercilious tone refers to the Opera of Ernani. By this she tries to assure the stranger of every safety that the dignified people are given to offer. Raina appears rather haughty when she says that they have the only library in whole Bulgaria, and they are frequent visitors to Venice. By this she wants to lay stress on their sophistication and elegance. Initially, Raina holds Bluntschli in utter abhorrence, daunt and dastard who has taken to his heels from the front. But, when Bluntschli unhearts his feelings about warfare, and candidly confesses that he likes to chocolates in his pistol-case her maternal instincts that lay sedimented under the vapours of romantic illusions, get saturated.
Raina appears to be more romantic than usual, when she saves Bluntschli from the Russian officer in a counterfeited action. Raina's conviction about higher love is a result of misconjecture, developed by her devouring Puskin and Byron. But Raina's "Platonic love" gives way to pragmatism, when her romantic illusions associated with war is shattered by the accounts given by the "unromantic Bluntschli", who effects topsy-turvy with the established conviction, that makes our lovely heroine descend from the airy surface of fairies to the corporeal level
------Essayed by Dipen Guha

[Avik Roy]

Dear Mr Guha,

Having acquired a little knowledge of English, i express my sincere horror at the quality of spellings used in your post. They are absolutely atrocious, to say the least. For example, in Post #4, i find you have used the word "soldering" five times. Now, soldering means a process of joining, fusing or fastening, usually of metals. Nowhere in Arms and the Man have i found Bluntschli or Sergius exchanging their views on soldering. Is it not appropriate to use the correct word, which is soldiering? In a forum dedicated to literature, such lapses are unwelcome.

Also, i have found a few grammatical errors that i would like to bring to your notice. "Chocolates that implies subsistence is more important than cartridges." - How can chocolates be a singular object? Since they are plural, the correct form should be "Chocolates that imply subsistence are more important than cartridges."

Avik

[chrismythoi]

Dear Mr Guha,

Having acquired a little knowledge of English, i express my sincere horror at the quality of spellings used in your post. They are absolutely atrocious, to say the least. For example, in Post #4, i find you have used the word "soldering" five times. Now, soldering means a process of joining, fusing or fastening, usually of metals. Nowhere in Arms and the Man have i found Bluntschli or Sergius exchanging their views on soldering. Is it not appropriate to use the correct word, which is soldiering? In a forum dedicated to literature, such lapses are unwelcome.

Also, i have found a few grammatical errors that i would like to bring to your notice. "Chocolates that implies subsistence is more important than cartridges." - How can chocolates be a singular object? Since they are plural, the correct form should be "Chocolates that imply subsistence are more important than cartridges."

Avik


how pompous you are

[Dipen Guha]

Dear Mr. Avik Roy,
Having acquired a little knowledge in (not "of") English, the expression of your sincere horror at the quality of spellings rocks me to feel ashamed of "such lapses".
Any way, you have, as good as a grim-jawed, meticulous scrutinizer, counted the number of lapses and "soldered" the crevices. I have full compliance to the earmarked spelling error "Soldering" instead of "soldiering".
As the implication of chocolates is subsistence, that needs to be taken as singular.
Examples:-a) The wages of sin is death. (Zandvoort). b) The poor man asks for an alms.(Wood). c). His whereabouts is known to you. (Jesperson). d) Tidings, that implies good new, must make us happy.(Comprehensive English Grammar). To make it, all the more lucid, I ought to have put the word chocolates within quotation.
"Nowhere in Arms and the Man have i (?) found Bluntschli or Sergius exchanging their views..."---It should be his views, as the conjunction "or" denotes either of the subjects.