76 pages • 2 hours read
Steven GallowayThe Cellist of Sarajevo
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1, Section 1 Summary
Arrow is a 28 year-old, highly intelligent and gifted assassin. As the chapter opens, she has some of the “men on the hills” in her rifle sites—three snipers who are laughing and talking, and, as Arrow thinks, have no idea that they have the best assassin in the Sarajevo army preparing to shoot one or all of them. Arrow is so skilled with a rifle she can even exceed her rifle’s distance range of eight hundred meters. But, of course, Arrow can “make a bullet do things others can’t” (3).
Arrow wasn’t always an assassin, nor was her name always Arrow. Arrow is a name she has carefully chosen to enable her to become something new—a killer. Once she led a more normal life as a university student and member of the sharpshooting team there. Her shooting skills were the reason she was eventually recruited.
Arrow becomes an assassin because of a noble conviction she holds that the men on the hills have taken something valuable, something sacred from her people. What it is Arrow thinks the snipers have taken is reflected in a moment she remembers from ten years ago, when she was driving to see some friends and a song came on the radio that, combined with the light filtering through lacey leaves, suddenly reminded her of her grandmother and she began to cry, “Not for her grandmother who was then still very much alive, but because she felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end . . .” (5) Now she realizes she was not being foolish. She realizes that “she [had] stumbled into the core of what it is to be human” (5).
It is this knowledge, an awareness of the beauty and transience of life and the richness that this gives our lives that the snipers have robbed Sarajevo of. This is why Arrow fights back.
However, Arrow separates herself from the “men on the hills” with her strict code of honor. While they shoot any kind of civilians, including women and children, Arrow will only shoot those who wish Sarajevo’s people harm.
At the end of this section, Arrow attempts a shot that fails, serving only to tell the men on the hills exactly what her location is. The snipers retaliate immediately, rapidly firing mortar after mortar at the office building where she is hiding. Arrow remains alive, shaken but safe.
Chapter 1, Section 2 Summary
While Arrow struggles to protect Sarajevo’s residents, Kenan is focused on protecting his family and providing for their most basic needs—a task which has become almost impossible because of the threat of sniper fire. Water has become a scarce commodity and in order to ensure safe drinking water for his family, Kenan has to travel across the city into a neighboring town called Steri Grad, where a brewery’s underground cistern promises clean water free from deadly parasites.
When we meet Kenan, he is preparing to go and get water again. Kenan’s family’s hopes for their future have been reduced to a hope for a few moments of electricity. So, when the lightbulb that signals to the family that the electricity is back flickers on, Kenan is excited and goes to wake his family—so they can all enjoy the scarce electricity. Before he can wake them, however, he hears the “pop” that tells him the light has gone back off—and so have their hopes for the day.
Going to get the water has become a practiced art for Kenan. He knows exactly how many bottles he can carry and how much will be enough for his family and his neighbor downstairs. As he sets out on his journey, his wife tells him to be careful, though both of them know that “there’s no such thing as careful . . . that luck or fate or whatever it is that decides who lives and who doesn’t has not, in the past, favored those who act in a way that could be described as careful” (16-17).
As he opens the door to the outside world, he is suddenly filled with a cold sense of dread. He doesn’t want to go. He wants, rather, to “go back inside, crawl into bed, and sleep until this war is over. He wants to take his younger daughter to a carnival. He wants to sit up, anxious, waiting for his older daughter to return from a movie with a boy he doesn’t really like” (17-18).
Chapter 1, Section 3 Summary
Dragan lives alone in a three-room apartment in west Sarajevo. He has a wife, Raza and an eighteen-year-old son, both of whom he managed to get out of the city before the war really started. He believes they are in Italy now, but he’s not sure, and part of him doesn’t want to know where they are.
He is forced to go outside only to work at the local bakery, where he can receive free meals and bread in exchange for his labor. These trips to work are horrifying for Dragan.
He has also taken to avoiding everyone he knows. He doesn’t want to see what the war has done to everyone he loves—all of whom are suffering from injuries, starvation, and from aging in a city under siege.
Dragan has isolated himself so much from others and is so distressed by the ravages suffered by his once-beloved city, that he has become severely depressed. When he thinks of dying his thoughts go far beyond what could be considered a normal fear of death: “Dragan is afraid of dying, but what he’s afraid of more is the time that might come between being shot and dying. He isn’t sure how long it takes to die when you’re shot in the head, if it’s instantaneous or if your consciousness remains for a few seconds??” (30-31).
In this chapter, Dragan is trying to make it up the hill to the bakery where he works and gets his meals every day. He spies a friend, Amil, but avoids him because he doesn’t want to be reminded, or to remind Amil of all they have lost, both within themselves and in the world about them.
If all of these characters seek ways to cope with the war-torn present, Dragan’s methods are isolation, living in the past, and avoidance. If he is to overcome these obstacles, he will have to confront something deep within himself.
Chapter 1 Analysis
In the three sections of the first chapter, and the prologue, Galloway has set his story into motion by establishing the different storylines and characters we will encounter throughout the novel— the cellist, Dragan, Arrow, and Kenan.
Arrow’s reason for becoming a sniper is revealed through her memories of that day when she experienced that sudden surge of emotion in the face of the sheer beauty of life. The “men on the hills” have stolen not just joy from Sarajevo’s people, but their hope, their lives, and even the possibility of a natural death.
When we encounter Kenan, we see a man plagued by fear, whose hopes have been reduced to a desire for some brief moments of electricity, a small moment of light in the darkness. That moment when he thinks the electricity has come back on is particularly touching—as he immediately wants to share it with his family. We also see a man who wants desperately to retreat completely inside himself—to go to bed and hide from the war raging outside him, but who cannot because he has to provide for his family’s needs.
If Arrow represents the future of Sarajevo, and Kenan its present, Dragan represents old Sarajevo. He is the historical repository of the novel. At 64 years-old, he carries with him Sarajevo’s cultural memory—from the Winter Olympics in 1984 to his memories of all the daily life there—food, fun, and fine cultural and educational institutions. The city was very close to Dragan’s heart and, therefore, his way of coping with the murderous present is to retreat into a world of isolation, where he can live in the past and hold his beautiful memories close, rather than confronting the horrors outside.
All of these characters, whether they remain inside or venture out into the ruined city, are “running inside” themselves as well. The running they do to avoid sniper fire is really the same kind of running they are doing inside to remain emotionally and mentally intact—to avoid the very stark reality that they will probably lose this war and that they may die very soon.
Galloway’s use of light is important throughout the novel. The hope for a brief moment of electric light symbolizes the frailty of the characters’ hopes—they cling to those moments when they come, but most are quickly extinguished. The men in the hills not only strive to kill civilians but also to kill whatever hope these characters have left. However, hope is necessary to their survival; they must keep hoping for moments of light.
With Arrow’s character, Galloway is able to explore the transformative power of war. Arrow has experienced an entire revolution of character, symbolized by her new name. We sense, behind the present characters as they are sketched, the once vibrant characters that they were before the war.
In an interview, Galloway stated that he saw the novel like a true sonata, which has three distinct voices united by theme, and that he wanted to explore, through three voices, three distinct human needs—for food, water, and staying alive. Kenan, of course, represents the struggle for water, Dragan, the struggle for food, and Arrow, the struggle to stay alive despite great odds, as she places herself directly on the city’s front lines.
Throughout the course of the novel, all three characters will not only be transformed by war, but also by the grace of the cellist’s gift of music to his city as well. They are changed by his bravery and by the beauty of the music itself.
Ultimately, both their own personal experiences and the cellist’s selfless gesture work upon their hearts and minds, changing these four people irrevocably.
