Response #4 Arrow (page 217-end)

Arrow is a very gifted female sniper who shoots at the men who shoot at the civilians of Sarajevo. She works for Nermin but does her own thing, except when he assigns her the task of protecting the cellist. When Nermin dies her new commander tries to make her shoot at civilians who are of the same religion as the Serbs shooting from the hills. Arrow runs away even though she knows they will find and kill her. She runs away to protect the cellist on his last day because she knows it is the right thing to do, and she is tired of the war. When Arrow joined the war I think she changed her name because she did not want the person that she was to be associated with killing people. She does not want the hatred that she feels towards the men on the hills to be any part of her former self. She plans on returning to her old self after the war, but knows it will not be easy. When Arrow hears the men coming to kill her she knows she could kill them all but she doesn’t. She just waits. I believe that now that the cellist is finished, Arrow feels like her work is done. She is tired of the war. Tired of killing and tired of hating. She doesn’t want to kill and hate anymore so she will let the men kill her. Just before they burst into her room “she says, her voice strong and quiet, ‘My name is Alisa’.” This is the last line of the book. I think Arrow says this because now that she is done killing and hating she wants to return to her old self, but she has no time because the men are going to kill her. Saying her name out loud after not even thinking it for so long is her way resigning. She is no longer Arrow who shoots to kill and hates the men on the hills for what they did to her city, and for making her hate them. She is now Alisa. Young, happy, and free of hate. She makes this connection with her old self and remembers what her life was like before the war. Perhaps she would have gone to school, or traveled, and gotten married. The possibilities were endless. The one thing Arrow does know is that this war and hatred is not necessary. “The men on the hills did not have to be murderers. She did not have to be filled with hatred.” As she listens to the cellist on his last day, the music brings these thoughts to the surface along with her tears. I believe it is then that she decides she is done with the war. She lays her rifle in the pile of flowers at the feet of the cellist. She is done killing. Done hating. “The men on the hills, the men in the city, herself, none of them had the right to do the things they’d done. It had never happened. It could not have happened. But she knew these notes. They had become a part of her. They told her that everything had happened exactly as she knew it had, and that nothing could be done about it. No grief or rage or noble act could undo it.” As Arrow realizes that this all could have been so easily stopped, she decides she will do her part to not let it continue. I think this is why she lays down her rifle, goes home and lets the men kill her. When she whispers her name, to her it means that she is dying the peaceful, carefree Alisa that could have lead a normal, happy life had it not been for the war and the hatred. She is dying free.

Response #3 Kenan (page 155-216)

Kenan goes to the brewery because it is the only place in the city to get clean water. He risks his life and walks a very long way once every 4 days or so to get the water for his family, and also for his unappreciative, uncooperative widowed neighbor Mrs. Ristovski. While Kenan is at the brewery it is shelled and he witnesses many people die and be injured, while narrowly avoiding death himself. Kenan classifies the citizens at the brewery into 3 categories: those who ran when the shell struck, those who desperately try to save the people who can be saved, and those who stand with their mouths gaping and do nothing. Kenan is part of the third group, but he wishes he were part of the second. He has to leave by a route that is not being shelled so he takes a half destroyed bridge that he can only cross with his water first, and then go back for Mrs. Ristovski’s because she was so stubborn and would not give him bottles with handles. I began thinking as soon as Kenan asks Mrs. Ristovski for her bottles, why does he get her water? She in not ever grateful and she is very rude to him. So why does he do her this favour? Is it because he feels bad for her, or is afraid of what she will do or what she will blame on him if he doesn’t? Maybe Kenan does it purely out of the goodness of his heart and doesn’t care that she is ungrateful. Or perhaps he can’t find it in him to tell her ‘no’. Kenan begins to think about this as he crosses the bridge. Why is she so darn stubborn? There is no reason that she could not find some bottles with handles, he has even offered her his extras. Why does he even bother getting her water? She is the most unappreciative person in the world. He made her a promise to help her at the beginning of the war but so what? She has never helped him, never been kind, welcoming, or even thankful to him. Kenan is tired. “He’s tired of getting water, and he’s tired from the world he lives in. He’s tired of carrying water for a woman who has never had a kind word to say to him, who acts as if she’s doing him a favour, whose bottles don’t have handles and who refuses to switch. If she likes the bottles so much, she should carry them to the brewery, she should watch as the street fills with blood and then washes itself clean... while the dead are loaded into a van.” Kenan leaves Mrs. Ristovski’s bottles in a small hole on the other side of the bridge and continues home without them.

On his way home Kenan hears the cellist play and he “watches as his city heals itself around him”. He watches the people stand up taller and watches happiness appear in their features, but then the music stops and it is all gone. Kenan decides to go back and get Mrs. Ristovski’s water. I think when the cellist’s music stops Kenan realizes that even the people who are still alive are the “dead among the living” and he wonders what killed Mrs. Ristovski, because she is a ghost. Was it her husband dying so many years ago, or something else? Kenan doesn’t want to be a ghost. He wants to live and help rebuild his beloved city. I think he knows he will rebuild it by being like the second group at the brewery and helping others. I think this is why he goes back to get the water. He has realized that the only way people will make it through this war is by helping each other, regardless of whether the favour is returned, or even appreciated.

Response #2 Dragan (page 45-154)

When Dragan first sees Emina he hopes she doesn’t notice him and won’t try to talk to him. I don’t think he’s being rude when he thinks this. He just doesn’t want to be reminded of the way things used to be, when he could stop and get caught up with an old friend in the street without being shot at. Dragan “can perhaps learn to bear the destruction of buildings, but the destruction of the living is too much for him”. So he doesn’t want to talk to Emina because he doesn’t want to see how the war has changed her. However, Emina spots him and asks about his wife, and they begin to talk against Dragan’s will at first. When the topic shifts to the war, Dragan puts a wall up and that is why he is unnecessarily harsh with Emina when he says “No one is coming. Don’t you know that?” Emina answers “I know no one is coming. I just don’t want to believe it”. This gets them talking again and Dragan seems more comfortable with the conversation. I think this is because he has found someone who he feels he can open up to. When Dragan decides to cross the street and is shot at, he runs back to Emina, “glad for the first time in a long while to be alive”. I believe this is a turning point for Dragan. The fact that he is happy to be alive surprises him and I think he realizes how long he has been living without really caring if he lived or died. This spurs him to ask Emina “do you think it’s worse to be wounded or killed?” When Emina answers wounded because you have a chance to live, Dragan disagrees and argues with her that you would just die later anyway. Dragan doesn’t know why he keeps saying these horrible things, but he can’t stop himself. I think he is looking for answers, and searching for hope. He is arguing, but he wants Emina to prove him wrong by telling him about all the people who have survived, but she can’t. He wants her to say that there is a chance to live so that he can find hope. She doesn’t speak for a while, and then tells him about the cellist. After another pause Dragan says “Why did the Sarajevan cross the road? To get to the other side.” It is a bad joke, but he doesn’t care. “He hasn’t told a joke in months. It feels good, even if the joke is awful.” As Dragan and Emina talk I think he somehow begins to find that little bit of hope that he has been waiting for. Little by little as he talks to her he finds that he seems to care more. About living and about the well being of others. When Emina decides to cross Dragan stays because only minutes ago he was shot at while trying to cross. I think Dragan would have normally just gone with Emina, but with this new outlook that he has, he cares more about living. He also feels scared for the first time in a long period of time in which I think he felt nothing but attempted indifference and numbness. When he hugs her, Emina feels “more substantial” because he has realized that even though the war has changed her, the same person is still in there, which reminds him that hope and fight are still within him.

Response #1 The Cellist (page 1-44)

The cellist witnesses 22 people killed by a shell while waiting in line to buy bread. He decides to play Albinoni’s Adagio on his cello at the same time every day for twenty two days. One Adagio for each victim. He will play while sitting in the crater made by the shell, in an open square, target to shelling and sniper fire.

I believe the cellist plays every day because the music restores his hope. There are some days when even the music cannot make him feel better about his beloved city that is falling to pieces around him, and these are the days when he plays the Adagio. I don’t know why the Adagio never fails to make him feel better. Even on the worst day he can be certain that after playing it, his hope will be restored. The cellist thinks that “each time he’s forced to the Adagio it becomes harder, and he knows its effect is finite.” I think the reason it becomes harder and harder for him to play the Adagio is because he knows that every time he has to play it, it’s because all his hope has left. He is desperate to find a new way to restore hope, but cannot find one. “There are only a certain number of Adagios left in him, and he will not recklessly spend this precious currency.” Why, then does he decide to play an Adagio every day for twenty two days if “he won’t be sure he has enough Adagios left.”? His Adagios are numbered because he only has so much belief and faith in mankind left in him. Why does he play? Does he play for himself? Does he play for the people who have died? Or for the people who haven’t died? What does he hope to accomplish? Maybe he plays because it is all he knows how to do and he wants to do something. Maybe he does not expect to accomplish anything.