Explication

The character Arrow in “The cellist of Sarajevo” is based on Polti’s dramatic situation of self-sacrifice for an ideal. Arrow is an incredibly gifted Sarajevan sniper. While most snipers need to take every variable into account when making long distance shots, Arrow “doesn’t take measurements or calculate formulas” (Galloway 10). Instead she is just able to make the bullet go where she wants. Despite Arrows gift, she tries to keep her military connections to a minimum in order to allow her to fight for her own reasons. While driving through the country side when she was just 18, Arrow had a beautifully simple experience that she describes as stumbling “into the core of what it is to be human” (Galloway 12). When Arrow sees the “men on the hills” shooting innocent men, women, and children, she fights back only because these people are robbing her and every other Sarajevan of the gift of understanding “that your life is wondrous , and that it won’t last forever” (Galloway 12).

The first way in which Arrow fights for her beliefs, is through physical sacrifice of herself. Arrow never has enough food to eat, and what she does have barely provides enough nutrition for her to survive. As a soldier she spends most of her energy fighting, but instead of earning food or money “she gets paid in cigarettes” (Galloway 195). Now, “the very thought of rice revolts her” (Galloway 195) since it is all she has to eat. While this lack of proper nutrition would concern most people, it does not compare to the danger she encounters during her job. When she is assigned to protect the cellist from an enemy sniper that will be sent to assassinate him, she is in a life or death dual. During one of the cellist’s performances, she narrowly avoids death when she realizes the assassin “has now found her, and a bullet is on its way” (Galloway 146), with just enough time to spare. Even when Arrow is the one shooting she is still in a great deal of danger. Whenever Arrow shoots at an enemy sniper, they will instantly “begin to search for her” (Galloway 14). If she is spotted but manages not to get shot by a sniper, then “they’ll shell the building into the ground if necessary” (Galloway 14). These shellings normally terrify most civilians, but Arrow is “in more danger during her average day then she is during the worst night of shelling” (Galloway 192).

The other type of sacrifice Arrow makes involves her doing things she knows to be unethical. When Arrow is initially approached by the military she explains that she “[doesn’t] want to kill people” (Galloway 70) .Up until this point she had only shot targets, she tells her unit commander that she “wants to be able to go back to the life [she] had before” (Galloway 71) and that she “wants her ands to be clean” (Galloway 71). When Arrow spots the cellists assassin she admits “she doesn’t want to pull her trigger” (Galloway 154), because “she can see that he doesn’t want to pull his” (Galloway 154). Despite all this Arrow shoots the assassin, compromising her morals.


Once Arrow kills someone, she also kills herself in a sense. She says “the woman who sat in this office on that day and said she didn’t want to kill anyone was gone” (Galloway 71). Now she has sacrificed herself, and become Arrow. She is driven to this alias because of the hate she has for the men on the hills. Whenever she is addressed by her real name she says “I am Arrow because I hate them” (Galloway 13) and that “the woman you know hated nobody” (Galloway 13). Gradually throughout the story we see her become Arrow more and more. This is until the very end of the novel when Arrow’s apartment is about to be broken into, and her, shot dead. Arrow knows that if she were to fight back “the men on the other side of the door would die” (Galloway 256). She realizes that this would only make her need to kill more after that, eventually contradicting the very thing she was fighting for. So instead of fighting back, she becomes herself again for the moment before her death. Right before she is shot, her last words are “My name is Alisa” (Galloway 258). This shows how Alisa has been sacrificed, and only Arrow would be able to survive within her.