House of Notes

The Realism of Shaw in the play In Bluntschli, Shaw has presented a realistic portrait of an average soldier, who is ready to fight when he must and is gland to escape when he can. Shaw has shown that a soldier is an ordinary creature of flesh and blood, who suffers from hunger and fatigue, and who is roused to action only by danger. In short, as Sergius puts it, war is a trade like any other trade; it is the coward's art of attacking the enemy when one gets him at a disadvantage, and of avoiding to fight him on equal terms. Of course, war is to be fought when absolutely necessary, but there should be no glorification of war. War is a brutal affair, and we should not sing songs of it. The cruelty and horror of war one highlighted through the relation of the horrible death of the twelve soldiers burnt alive in a farmhouse. In this way idealistic notions of war are punctured. Both Sergius and Raina are disillusioned in their romantic or idealistic notions of war; they ...

George Eliot as a Novelist. George Eliot was the most important woman novelist of her age. She serves as a link between the traditional form of fiction and the modern one. Her emphasis on character, the human psychology, moral values, philosophy in fiction, spiritual growth, realism, her reflective humour, depiction of society and social analysis and a lucid and simple style makes her one of the greatest novelists of all times. Let us discuss the salient features of her art as a novelist. To Compton-Rickett, “She was the first novelist to lay the stress wholly upon character rather than incident.” She is at her best in characterisation for here we find both subtlety and variety. The Florentine scholars, half-witted rustics, cultured free-thinkers, wayward, passionate natures, shallow, insincere characters, mystics and men of the world. Her wide range of observation, her generous sympathies, and the power of detachment, trained by scientific study, all helped to give breadth an...