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Destruction through Laughter: Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man

This paper examines the comic aspects of George Bernard Shaw's comedies, investigating the similarities to and the differences from the laughter theory of Henri Bergson. Shaw has a notion that the task of the writers in his time is to destroy the conventional value system and old-fashioned conduct norms widely accepted by the Victorian Englishmen. His method in his comedies to change the views of his contemporaries possessed with false idealism is to induce their laughter by ridiculing the characters who lack the flexible and realistic mindset. Laughter in Shaw's comedies has much in common with the nature of comedy asserted by Henri Bergson in his Le Rire, in the respect that the object of ridicule is the rigid characters' automatism, that is, the rigid, the mechanical, the ready-made, and the absent-mindedness. But, whereas Bergson insists that comedy accepts social life as a natural environment and ridicules the departure of the eccentric individuals from the conduct norms, Shaw ridicules the conduct norms as such. In his Arms and the Man Shaw makes a mockery of Sergius' rigid attitude and mechanical and habitual manner of speaking. Falsehood and harm of idealism, such as romantic love and heroism, is revealed through laughter aroused by Sergius' unrealistic and inflexjble attitude and habitual repetition of clocklike behavior and remarks.