The Cellist of Sarajevo Literary Elements

Fiction

The action takes place in the city of Sarajevo, during the siege of Sarajevo that lasted between 1992 and 1996.

Each of the main character's stories are told from a third-person omniscient point of view.

Tone: meditative, anxious, tense, fearful, uneasy, ominous

Mood: gloomy, restless, numb, tense

The protagonists are the cellist, Dragan, Arrow, and Kenan; the antagonists are the "men on the hills"

The major conflict is between the people of Sarajevo, trying to live, and the people on the hills shooting at the people inside the city.

Also, each of the characters experience internal conflict throughout the story. Arrow resists the urge to hate the men on the hills, which becomes harder and harder the longer the war progresses. Kenan's conflict is internal insecurity, and how he feels he is a coward for not wanting to enlist as a soldier. Dragan struggles to accept the state of the war, and isolates himself from the rest of the city. These internal conflicts heavily impact each character's actions.

The story reaches its climax when the cellist plays for the last time.

1. When Arrow meets with Nermin the first time in the novel, she remembers and earlier meeting in which his eyes "flickered down to where his own hands lay folded on his desk and then back up. She wasn't sure if he knew he had done this" (58) foreshadows what Nermin later reveals he knows—even the "good guys" aren't so good, and Arrow's thought that things will go back to normal is foolish

1. The cellist says that the guns on the hills "dismantled him just as they have the opera Hall, just as they have his family home in the night while his father and mother slept" (xviii); this is an understatement because his parents were killed
2. "I hope you're better with children than you are with plants. They're considerably more difficult" (105)
3. "The situation here is uncertain" (131)...an understatement in reference to the situation in Sarajevo

1. Kenan alludes to the First World War, Franz Ferdinand, and the Princip Bridge (49)
2. "a man who survived Jasenovac, and then Auschwitz" (74) references a concentration camp and a death camp during the Holocaust of WWII
3. "rats of Hamelin" (106) is a reference to the story of the Pied Piper
4. "Atlas and his world" (184) is a reference to the Greek Titan who holds up the world

The imagery is stark and bleak, giving the reader a look at war-torn Sarajevo and those who inhabit its once-beautiful streets. Galloway focuses on destroyed buildings, gutted streets, explosions and sniper fire, and people simply trying to survive. He also, though, gives us small images of hope, such as the cellist, Dragan saying hello to someone, Arrow standing up for herself, etc. The city may be destroyed, but the people are still surviving as best they can.

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When the characters talk about the hills, they refer to the snipers living in the hills and shooting at the civilians inside the city.

1. "You don't choose what to believe. Belief chooses you" (8)
2. "It appears as if the cello stays upright of its own will" (61)
3. "Even the war stops for a rest, if only a short one" (81)
4. "the rifle in the window has now found her" (128)