Reading Response #4

The end of this novel was quite nice. Admittedly it was much nicer than I anticipated. While the cellist survived, Arrow was almost willingly assassinated. The instant before Arrow is shot, she says “my name is Alisa. After adopting the alias Arrow for the duration of the novel due to her military connections, having her return to using her original name (for however briefly) shows that she momentarily became the person she was before the war. A similar experience was also had by Kenan and Dragan. Kenan motivates himself to go on yet another trip for water. This time he has a much more positive attitude towards the journey. When he first leaves at the beginning of the novel, he dreads the trip and is frightened to death of it. This time he admits many people are doing to save what they believe in. The most significant change is how he knocks on Mrs.Ristovski’s door to get her water bottles. This is a huge change from a few days ago when he nearly justified leaving her bottles behind, giving her no water. Dragan also returns to “the person he was before the war”. He does this when he crosses a street, completely exposed to snipers. Instead of waiting for “the right moment” and sprinting across the street, he walks at a casual pace. He no longer feared being shot. It’s interesting to see that the performance of the cellist let everyone return to their normal selves.

While reading the novel I was always curious to see if the different characters stories would intersect at the end. While the characters stories remained very much distinct, they all had the cellist in common. This is very effective in showing the cellist effect on the people of Sarajevo. Since they all had such a similar reaction, it shows that the cellist playing had a similar effect on the people who came and listened.