How can the message from the play apply to our world today? (

Arms and the Man is concerned foremost with the clash between knowledge and ignorance, or, otherwise stated, between realism and romanticism. Rainaand her fiancé Sergius are steeped in the romanticism of operettas and paperback novels. Bluntschli uses his superior knowledge to disabuse Raina of her military delusions, while the experience of war itself strips Sergius of the grand ideals he held. The couple’s idealized vision of warfare deflates in the face of additional information. There is nothing romantic about war including in today's conflicts. People who get caught up in a romantic and exciting idea of war are always crushed and disappointed.