Write an essay on the role of Major Petkoff's coat in the develop

Write an essay on the role of Major Petkoff’s coat in the development of the plot of Arms and the Man.’

What is the dramatic significance of the coat-episode in ‘Arms and the Man‘ ?

Ans.

Major Petkoff’s old coat serves a very significant dramatic purpose in the play and so remains very significant for the development of the plot. The Swiss fugitive, being chased by the Bulgarian cavalry, runs for life, enters the bedroom of Raina and gets saved by this romantic, passionate young girl due to some inexplicable sense of pity. When the man departs in the morning, Raina gives him her father’s old coat to wear and behaving very rashly, slips her picture inside its pocket with the inscription on it.” Raina to her Chocolate Cream-Soldier a Souvenir.” This coat, however, provides the Swiss fugitive, Bluntschli, with an excuse to return to Raina’s house. His arrival this time creates a lot of confusion and generates many complications in the plot.

When Louka, the maid servant, gives the information of his arrival to her mistress Catherine, the latter gets really perturbed. She cries out: “Oh Heavens! he’s come to return the coat. Send him away; say we’re not at home; asks him to leave his address and I’ll write to him.” But soon she realizes that these false excuses are all futile. She then asks Louka to show the gentleman in to close the door of the library as she passes through and to tell Nicola, the man servant to bring the visitor’s carpet bag after him. Such a behaviour of the mistress makes Louka suspicious. When Bluntschli comes in, Catherine “swoops on him with impetuous, urgent, coaxing appeal” and urges him to leave the house at once. “My husband has just returned with my future son-in-law;” she says, “and they know nothing. If they did the consequences would be terrible. If he discovers our secret, he will never forgive me; and my daughter’s life will hardly be safe.” Her fear actually comes true and the arrival of the Swiss creates problems for her and Raina but not because of any national animosities as she says and the consequences are not terrible at all. On the other hand, they turn out to be happy for all-for Sergius, for Louka for Raina, for Bluntschli and also for the Petkoff.

Bluntschli is about to go away when he is seen by Major Petkoff and is warmly welcomed. On his insistence, Bluntschli decides to stay there for a few days. The complication arises when Major Petkoff starts asking for his old coat. He feels very comfortable after taking a sumptuous lunch, sitting in his arm chair with a newspaper in hand. One thing, however, he feels is missing to make him thoroughly comfortable and that is his old coat. “I’m not at home in this once, he says. “I feel as if I were on parade.” Catherine scolds him on the absurdity of his obsession with the old coat and assures him that the coat must be hanging in his blue wardrobe. But Major Petkoff insists that the coat is not there-“My dear; if you think the obstinacy of your sex can make a coat out of two old dressing gowns of Raina’s, your waterproof and my mackintosh, you’re mistaken. That’s exactly what the blue closet contains at present.” When Nicola is sent to bring the coat, Petkoff’s gambling instincts get around and he bets for any piece of jewellery she likes to order from Sofia against a week’s house-keeping money. That the coat in not there in the blue. Catherine accepts the challenge and then Major Petkoff tries to draw Bluntschli in the gambling game but the Swiss very shrewdly refuses the bet saying “It would be robbing you, Major Madame is sure to be right”. But Sergius who is equally fond of gambling gets excited and bets his best charger against and Arab mare for Raina that the coat is there in the blue closet. Catherine tries to stop her husband from accepting the bet. At this Raina behaves very impertinently and tells her mother that she is ready to accept her jewellery why is she grudging her daughter her Arabian mare. Before it could happen Nicola returns with the coat and fills his master with many apprehensions about his advancing age: “I could have sworn it wasn’t there. Age is beginning to tell on me.” He then changes his coat and feels at home at last.

But this comfort of his does not last long. After sometime he starts having suspicions that somebody with a differently shaped back has been wearing the coat because it is all burst open at the sleeve. He requests Catherine to mend it. By this time Raina has come to know that the photograph that she had kept in the pocket of the coat was never found by Bluntschli and it was bound to be there still. So when Nicola brings the coat in after repairs she pretends to help her father in wearing the coat and very dexterously takes the photograph from the pocket. She throws it on the table before Bluntschli who hides it beneath a sheet of paper. All this happens right in front of Sergius who becomes suspicious in the highest degree. Now Raina and Bluntschli feel that they have succeeded in avoiding the but it is not so because Major Petkoff has already seen the photograph. He exposure asks questions and the identity of the Chocolate Cream Soldier and the details of Bluntschli’s midnight adventure in the bedroom of Raina have to be revealed. Ultimately all this leads to the marriage of Sergius with Louka and of Raina with Bluntschli.

The coat, though and old insignificant article in itself, thus becomes a very important part of the development of the plot of the play. Bluntschli was smuggled out of the house in this coat and it is because of this alone that he returns. If it were not so, Bluntschli would have gone back to Switzerland and no tension or crisis would have occurred in the lives and relationship of Sergius and Raina and Louka would then not have succeeded in marrying Sergius and getting elevated to the higher class. Perhaps then she would have been forced to marry the middle aged Nicola. The old coat brings about drastic changes in the lives of almost all the major characters in the play. It also throws light on the their personalities. Major Petkoff’s whimsical obsession his and Sergius gambling instincts. Catherine’s tactfulness. Bluntschli’s intelligence and shrewdness, Raina’s romantic behaviour are all brought forth due to this coat episode. When Bluntschli says that for the sake of safe keeping, he pawned the coat one cannot help wonder at his practical attitude but Raina gets disgusted and says, “You have a low shop-keeping mind. You think of things that would never come into a gentleman’s head. The coat episode thus helps bring forward the contrast between the romantic Raina and Sergius on one side and the anti romantic Bluntschli on the other.

It is the coat only which contains Raina’s photograph in its pocket and thus exposes the hollowness of the romantic notions of love. The coat introduces complication and suspense into the plot and ultimately resolves them and leads to a happy ending. It is the source of a lot of comic laughter. Wit and ingenuity of the playwright also find ample opportunity to be displayed because of this episode. This coat thus together with the photograph of Miss Petkoff and the funny epithet of Chocolate Cream Soldier helps in the development of the plot and has a lot of dramatic significance.