War, Civilians, and Humanity Theme Analysis

The Cellist of Sarajevo depicts three weeks during the Siege of Sarajevo, which occurred during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Rather than primarily portraying soldiers, the novel focuses on civilians. In doing so, Galloway shows that war affects everyone—even those who aren’t directly participating. War upends what people prioritize, how they act and behave, and it alters the most fundamental aspects of how they think.

The most obvious way in which the war changes the lives of the citizens of Sarajevo is by forcing them into a constant struggle for survival, through both the immediate threat of being shot by the army in the surrounding mountains, and through the longer term threat of limited food and water. The novel’s three main characters have different ways of enduring and reacting to these constant threats: Arrow works in the Sarajevo militia as a sniper to try to protect her city, Dragan makes his way through the dangerous streets to get a hot meal, and Kenan travels miles to get clean water for his family and neighbor. Even the most quotidian of these tasks exposes them to mortal danger, as Kenan is nearly hit by an exploding shell when seeking water, and Dragan is standing right near two people who are killed by enemy snipers while crossing a street.

In addition to the physical danger, the novel shows the psychological and emotional damage of the war. Arrow gives up her old identity to become a “weapon” for the Sarajevo militia, going so far as to renounce her old name in order to make a clean break from her previously carefree self. With her father dead, she cares for nothing now but doing as much as she can to hurt the snipers on the hill. Kenan is consumed by worry for his children, and he is terrified that his family will be in danger if they ever leave the house, even though he resents that his children cannot go outside and have normal childhood experiences. Kenan’s instinct is to care for his family at all costs, but the dangers outside nearly cause him to lose his generosity: in his mission to get water, Kenan recognizes how much easier it would be if he only had to carry water for his own family, and not for an elderly neighbor whom he naively promised to take care of when the war started. Dragan, meanwhile, sent his family to Italy so that they would be safe from the war. He has since isolated himself from all his old friends and he tries not to engage with anyone because in his hopelessness he can’t bear to remember what was normal in the streets before the siege began.

Ultimately, the novel portrays the journey of each character to prioritize emotional health over physical safety, since ensuring physical safety is impossible. Instead, the characters choose to reclaim and maintain their humanity despite the terrors of the war. After witnessing an old friend get wounded by a sniper, Dragan begins to reconnect to others. Likewise, instead of giving in to his impulse to close his heart to anyone but blood relations, Kenan forces himself to continue to get water for his neighbor and stay hopeful for his family. Arrow, meanwhile, leaves the Sarajevo militia when she is ordered to kill civilians instead of soldiers, despite knowing that she herself could be killed for desertion. The contrast between Arrow’s moral compass and the utilitarian mindset of the other militia members suggests that the civilians’ battle to maintain their humanity is more important than any aspect of the physical war. The Sarajevo militia, after all, has gotten to the point of engaging in immoral acts because it has lost its humanity. While war is a conflict between opposing sides, Galloway suggests that it is also an attack upon people’s sense of individual and communal humanity. And so, the novel suggests that once the war eventually ends, it is only the civilians with their humanity intact who can have any hope of rebuilding Sarajevo.