Drifting of Hope

Losing hope is like living in the darkness where you ignore the stars. Hope is easily lost in certain circumstances when people start to believe that the situation they are in will never improve or be in their favour . In the novel, "The Cellist of Sarajevo," the war going on results in the characters to lose all hope they have of living past this war and living in the Sarajevo they once knew and loved. Hope is crucial in order to survive the war, however, in the novel "The Cellist of Sarajevo" by Steven Galloway the characters Dragan and Kenan's hopeful side is absent.

One of the characters, Dragan, who helped his wife and son escape from Sarajevo, has no hope left for himself. Firstly, Dragan's hopeless character is highlighted when he recalls the pre-war Sarajevo. As Dragan describes, "That the Sarajevo he remembers, the city he grew up in and was proud of and happy with, likely never existed" (Galloway, 33). For the people trapped in Sarajevo, like Dragan, the war is dragging on and there seems to be no end. In order to have hope, you have to be able to hold on to your happy moments, and wait for them to return. Dragan, however, cannot even remember the times that he was happy in this city. Clearly, his inability to remember the old city that he once loved dearly, shows his loss of hope. Secondly, Dragan is displayed as being hopeless as he states his opinion on what the cellist is doing. Dragan explains that, "what the cellist wants isn't change, or to set things right again, but to stop things from getting worse" (126). In Dragan's opinion, the cellist is not setting things right, since that is no longer possible. This quotation proves that Dragan now believes that the situation cannot go back to normal, and things cann...

... middle of paper ...

...al just gives the men more opportunities to kill him, proves him as a hopeless character. To summarize, as the war continues, Kenan's hope in surviving the war begins to drift away.

In conclusion, the characters, Dragan and Kenan in Steven Galloway's, "The Cellist of Sarajevo," lose all hope of surviving the war and having their lives return back to normal. The characters forget all about the pre-war city since they are so mesmerized with their lives as citizens trying to survive a war. Dragan is a man who made his family escape from Sarajevo before the war started and is now battling to survive in this war field. Kenan is another man who lives in Sarajevo with his family, and risks his life doing daily tasks, such as collecting water for the family. Hope is not thinking of all the misery that is around you, but keeping in mind the beauty that is still intact.