Comparing The Cellist Of Sarajevo And The Ghost Road War

Since the beginning of civilization and even before, humans have been consumed by war. “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” (Galloway 0) a quote by Lean Trotsky acknowledged by Galloway in the epigraph of the book. He is saying that you do not have to want a war to end up in one. Generation after generation learns the hard horrors of war. A warring civilization is like a destroyed building it can be rebuilt but what made up that building can never be replaced. In Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo and Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road war causes irreparable damage. The effects of damage range from the loss of one’s identity including sanity and loss of humanity that leaves civilization merely a ghost of what it

was before. Someone may seem to survive war but a part of them will always be lost. “Now all roads lead to France and heavy is the tread of the living; but the dead returning lightly dance” (Barker 0) a quote by Edward Thomas acknowledged by Barker in the epigraph of this book suggests, how impossible it was to resist the call back to France for those who had left their fighting comrades in the trenches. So they keep going back to war till they were physically or emotionally dead.

To start, in Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo, during the siege of Sarajevo many people lost sight of who they really were and it became very clear they were becoming “ghosts” of who they were previously. Kenan says, “She has been a ghost for a long time. And to be a ghost while you’re still alive is the worst thing he can imagine. Because, like it or not, sooner or later we all become ghosts” (Galloway 184). Kenan is a farther of two trying to survive the war. He watches as his neighbor whom he risks his life to get water for slowly become nothing like her pervious self. Kenan’s neighbor just sits at home passing time waiting for the war to be over losing sight of the human she used to be. Kenan himself is terrified of becoming a ghost because to him if he loses whom he was formerly what was the point in living. Again the narrator says, “Kenan will not be a ghost. Enough has been done to this city in the name of ghosts. He tells himself this, as though saying it will make it true. You are not a ghost. You are not a ghost. But as he repeats these words, he knows that saying them will not make them true. All the words in the world cannot keep him from fading away.” (Galloway 185). Kenan tries his very hardest to stay the same as he was previously but the war forces his hand and slowly but surely Kenan himself is losing his identity. Another character very strongly against losing herself is Arrow. Arrow is a female competition shooter that is strongly against violence but after seeing so many civilians die she decides on leaving her old life behind. She says, “You don’t choose what to believe. Belief chooses you” (Galloway 23). Despite the fact that she is against violence it is not her choice to make in her circumstance she is forced into violence. She chooses to have a new name because someday she hopes to go back to her old self. She says, “I am Arrow because I hate them. The women you knew hated nobody” (Galloway 23). She wouldn’t have to create an alias if she was not forced into hating her attackers. At the very end of the book Arrow cannot handle being forced to hate people she never wanted to hate, so she decides she will not fight. This is a death sentence, so right before she is killed “she says, her voice strong and quite ‘My name is Alisa’” (Galloway 258). She has lost all her identity and would rather die as her old self then continue as Arrow.

To continue, holding on to sanity is a very important for up holding one’s identity. By the end of the book the characters in the The Cellist of Sarajevo are fed up with the war and want things to go back to the way they were. It could be said that Dragan has gone insane, “he could run now, but he doesn’t he waits for gunfire, for the bullet that will hit him. But it never comes” (Galloway 258). Dragan is no longer running across the road to avoid bullets he has decided that this war has changed him too much if he gets shot walking across the road then so be it.

Similarly to The Cellist of Sarajevo in Barker’s The Ghost Road, there is also a great fear of becoming a ghost. Men being sent off to World War 1 did not only become ghosts but living ghosts who lost everything they were before. Billy Prior says, “Ghosts everywhere even the living were only ghosts in the making” (Barker 54). Everyone is a ghost even the living. Anyone that is not a ghost is yet to be one. As Billy Prior believes no one comes back from war only the mentally destroyed bodies will be shipped back. Billy Prior holds himself at a distance from the others. As he says, “The mess has scuffed no-colour lino – the colour of misery has a colour…” (Barker 54). Billy Prior can see the misery in everyone around him. When he looks at the mess hall he can see it. He ends up alienating himself because why waist time on people that are just going to die. So in the process of doing this Billy Prior says, “I am consciously and deliberately destroying my self-respect” (Barker 62). He knows he is destroying himself by not letting anyone get to close but at the same time anyone he feels like he could get close to will just die. Throughout the war Billy Prior is becoming less stable and not like himself. Billy says, “My nerves are in perfect working order” (Barker 112). He says this as if trying to convince himself that he is okay but of course he is far from okay.

To continue, the sanity of the characters in The Ghost Road most importantly Billy Prior and Doctor Rivers are some of the most important aspects affecting identity. After being at war for a long time Billy thinks, “I mean that in my present situation the only sane thing to do is run away and I will not do it” (Barker 113). Billy thinks it is crazy to be in this war the old Billy would never stay and fight he would think it to be insane. Furthermore Doctor Rivers has become so consumed by the war that “If someone had... shouting ‘the war is over’ he’d have said ‘oh really and gone back to writing up notes” (Barker 259). Rivers is so in encompassed by the war that anything but war would be insane, he wouldn’t believe it was over. At the end of the book when the war really is over rivers doesn’t know what to do with himself, he is lost.

The second way by which the Destruction of War is unfixable in The Cellist of Sarajevo and The Ghost Road is the loss of humanity. To start, in The Cellist of Sarajevo, Kenan and his family are forced into living in an unbearably hard situation. Him and his family worry all night about mortars hitting the house. No one can go outside without the fear of being killed. Yet they have no choice that’s where they get the little amount of food and water there is to survive. So when something like, “The bulb in the ceiling surges to life… faces will be tired from smiling” (Galloway 30) it is a miracle to the family because it means they can try to pretend the there is not war. But no matter how hard they try things are never the same. When Kenan is out getting water for his family one-time mortars strike killing and injuring tens of people. But what makes it worst is, “They’re firing at the ambulances sent to help” (Galloway 156). The fighting is becoming more and more inhuman. Arrow being a sniper is use to seeing inhumane actions like snipers shooting civilians in the gut so when others come to help they will be shot as well. So when the narrator says, “Arrow is getting ready to kill the sniper… but she hesitates after seeing his reaction to the cellist’s music” (Galloway 174) it is a big shock because it is the first time the reader sees humanity in the attackers. The sniper is unable to kill the cellist because of the music. Although what is an even bigger shock is that after seeing this Arrow still completes her mission and kills the only sign of humanity she has seen since the war began.

To start, similar to The Cellist of Sarajevo in Barker’s The Ghost Road, there is a loss of humanity.

War deprives humans of being humans as a fellow soldier named Hallet says, “he was talking to Owen saying real anti-war poems ought to celebrate what war deprives men of.” (Barker 219). He is saying that it should be recognized that war deprives men and more specifically deprives them of their essential humanity. A doctor named Rivers has seen thousands of injures. “Look at us. We don’t remember, we don’t feel, we don’t think – at least beyond the confines of what’s needed” (Barker 160). Doctor rivers is numb from all the patients he has had. Him and all his colleagues no longer feel bad when someone dies they have lost the most important human attribute emotions. They are only capable of doing their duty as if only a machine. Billy Prior has to survive through a terrible unforgivable war. As Billy says, “I think the worst time was after the counter-attack, when we lay in that trench all day surrounded by the dead.” (Barker 194). Billy and everyone that survived that attacked were scarred by the fact that to survive they had to hide in a trench surrounded and filled with fellow dead soldiers. This haunted Billy Prior and the other soldiers up until the end of the book. There is a lot of killing in war especially in World War 1. Billy Prior thinks, “Murder is only killing in the wrong place” (Barker 54). Billy has a point if he were killing these people anywhere else it would be considered murder but because someone else says that this killing is okay that makes it better. Killing is killing it is always wrong there is nothing human about killing another human. Society as whole is effected by war it changes each and every person damaging the whole population. Slowly it turns people from soulful humans into cruel cold-blooded humans only interested in winning and not the greater picture. As Billy says, “A good Deal of innocence has been lost in recent years not all

of it on the battlefields” (Barker 54). This implies that not only are the soldier affected by the war but everyone surrounding. Humanity as a whole is lost one bit at a time.

In conclusion, Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo and Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road war causes damage beyond repair. The effects of damage range from the loss of one’s identity including sanity and loss of humanity that leaves civilization and more importantly individuals merely ghosts or fragments of what was before. All the characters in the novels go through a transformation due to war. This transformation leaves them but a shell of what they were previously. All of the characters want things to go back to the way it was before but this is impossible due to the fact that war has changed things for good. Personalities have being lost along with the humanity as a whole. The damage caused by war can be replaced but it can never be repaired the lost and damaged souls cannot be taken back.