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The Theme Of War In The Cellist Of Sarajevo By Steven Galloway

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The novel The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway is a fictional story based on true events from the war in Sarajevo. Galloway tells the story through the eyes of three different characters named Arrow, Kenan, and Dragon. Galloway depicts through his characters how surroundings altogether influence their lives, morals, values, and state of mind. He especially shows this theme through Arrow, a young woman in which the war has affected her deeply. The surroundings from war overall changes and shapes Arrow’s moral traits and her relationship with others, such as taking away her innocence, kindness and making her emotionless, showing no remorse for those who die. Furthermore, Arrow’s surroundings which affect her morally, physically and emotionally throughout the book show the heavily prevalent theme of the corrupting effect war has on the people who witness it. …show more content…

After the war, the fighting and the all the deaths had started to occur, Alisa changed her name to Arrow because she had changed. The war had caused her to hate. Arrow had hated the men in the hills. In the book, it states, “ To hate people because they hated her first, and then to hate them because what they’ve done to her, has created a desire to separate the part of her that will enjoy fighting back, from the part that never wants to fight in the first place. “ Therefore Arrow had to go by a different name in order to separate herself from her past self so that one day she could return to her old name and put the war behind her, as though not to carry the hatred and guilt with her all her life. In conclusion, The war surrounding Arrow had caused her to retreat into a shell of her former self, she had to hate in order to survive and help fight against the men in the hills who were killing off her city and her

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