Charecter sketch of Sergius Saranoff in Shaws 'Arms and the man'.

Brave soldier:

       Sergius is brave soldier. In his charge, he wins attack at the battle of Slivnitza. He has romantic view about war. He joined army not to earn livelihood, but to win glory and heroism. He has intelligence and common sense. He is like real rebel. He resigns his post in army, when he realizes injustice with him. 

Intemperate and imbalanced person:

      Sergius is Intemperate and imbalanced person by nature. He is very impatient. His dream was to get military honors, but when he failed to get it he resigns. He is excessive in all aspect of life. He has distorted notions of dignity and prosperity. He thinks that greatness does not lie in apologizing. His vanity is the result of his self conceitedness. He talks higher love; and the same time, he flirts with Looka.

Psychologically Complex Character:

       Sergius is Psychologically Complex Character. His ideas and actions are not reconcilable. He is living anomaly and contradictions in qualities. His power of introspection realizes that he is bundle of contradiction. He is not able to find his real self.

Hollowness of his higher romantic love:

        As we find that Sergius has higher romantic love for Raina, and he worship her as goddess. Addresses her with – “My Queen!”, “My lady! My Saint!”, but behind the back of Raina, he flirts with Looka. He shows that his love to Raina is platonic and sexless, but such love is like the horns of rabbit. He seeks comfort in Looka’s physical love. His romantic love is given away to the realistic love. His love for Looka is based upon passion. He believes that a man tried of a higher love; it must have woman’s heart, as well as her body to fulfill biological needs. This is conquest of passion and reality over romanticism.

Biggest fool in the Play:

       In the whole play Sergius behaves like a fool. Because Shaw believes that every soldiers are stupid. After he returns from the war, his illusion of romanticism about war was broken, as he says to Catherine – “Soldering is the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong and keeping out of harm's way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting.”

His illusion of love still he has, because of his ideas are fanciful and romantic, but he could not digest the higher love of Raina and he finds pleasure in Looka.

Conclusion:

       In Short we can say that, Sergius is an interesting character, and a good subject for analytical study. Shaw has said that his attempt was to create comic Hemlet. Actually Shaw wanted to prick the bubble of Romance of war and marriage. Sergius is molded on Byron’s heroes.