Arms and the Man

Examine Shaw's use of parallelism in "Arms and the Man".

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Captain Bluntschli challenges Raina at every turn, as he is the only one who can see through her performance. In a witty moment of parallelism, he turns her words around:

Raina: Do you know, you are the first man I ever met who did not take me seriously?
Bluntschli: You mean, don't you, that I am the first man that has ever taken you quite seriously? (51)

Raina asserts that other men take her performance at face value, and consider her a woman of pride and fine bearing. Bluntschli, on the other hand, sees her for the woman she is, rather than who she pretends to be. Therefore, he is the only man who takes the true Raina seriously, discounting her lie.

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