Poetry for the Inner Ear

Arms and the man by the Nobel Laureate George Bernard shaw is on e most thought provoking plays. It is a play with an impressive moral lesson about Love and war. Shaw affirmed that for the sake of ‘Art for art’s sake’ he won’t write a single line. But to criticize Sjhaw as a propagandist would be an error of perspective. I am sure if we follow the advice of Bluntschli, the mouthpiece of Shaw in the play, we would stop glorifying the war. Bluntschli is a ‘chocolate cream soldier’. Whenever he goes to the battlefield, he prefers to use chocolate instead of cartridges. Shaw is indirectly suggesting that food is more importan war. A.C. Ward is quite right that Arms and the Man makes us laugh, and makes us think. The play satirizes our romantic attitude toward love and war. This is fully substantiated by the following famous lines by Bluntschli where he criticizes the romantic attitude toward war: "Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are...

George Samson aptly remarks that like Shakespeare, Dickens has conquered the world. This is absolutely true about his immortal novel David Copperfield. This novel reveals Dickens’ conviction-‘a belief in the paramount value of the primary, simple, benevolent impulses of man, his instinctive wish to love love and laugh, give and share’. The most remarkable quality of his novels is his humor. R. C. Churchill rightly comments” “In the field of comedy, I put Dickens above Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Fielding and Smollett.” Priestley too says that Dickens “made more people laugh than the sum total of authors in several literatures.” Dickens has created immortal characters in this novel. The major characters in this novel are David Copperfield, Uriah Heep, Betsey, Mr. Micawber and Miss Clara Peggotty. Mr. Micawber is an immortal character like Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The novel includes autobiographical element. David is Charles Dickens himself. Mr. and Mrs. Micawber r...