How does the author convey the dehumanising impact of war in his text?
The main way the author, Steven Galloway, conveys the dehumanising impact of war is through an extended motif of comparing animals to the people of Sarajevo that are affected by the war. Kenan, one of the three main characters in which the cellist intertwines with, explains the comparison between pigeons and people, he feels a “sort of kinship with the pigeon.” In the war, “he thinks it's possible that the men on the hills are killing them slowly, a half-dozen at a time, so there will always be a few more to kill the next day.” Before the war began Sarajevo was a city of peace and love, the war changed this. The war and the men on the hills made the people of Sarajevo hate.
…show more content…
This is what Arrow hates the most about the men on the hills. The war changed her, “this is what makes her a weapon.” This weapon made an image of herself and made up the name Arrow to cover the memories of her past self.
“I am Arrow because I hate them.” She kills the soldiers, not because she wants to, but because the soldiers have robbed her of the rare gift of understanding that her life is wondrous and that it will not last forever. This becomes so self-evident that it has lost all its meaning. Throughout the war, out of the four protagonists, Arrow changes the most, she becomes less of a weapon. Arrow is also the only character that has a choice. Arrow achieves redemption of the effects of war and chooses to be suicidal and be her old self before the war changed her. As her last words, she reveals herself as “Alisa.” This represents how Arrow overcome the corruption of war. Her fight is now over, and she has given up being the weapon the war had created. The idea of dehumanisation through the impact of war is repeated constantly through each of the protagonists. Kenan, every four days makes a trip to the brewery, however, this time there were several trucks …show more content…
gathering water as well as hundreds of people lining up for water as well. This creates an allusion in the text and mainly in Kenan’s time in the war. He describes the brewery as “a pilgrimage, a parade”, and all the people as “rats of Hamelin.” Like the rats, they must get water, they have no choice. No one cares if the rats die. Dragan thinks that the men on the hills believe dogs are different to the people of Sarajevo. How the soldiers would not shoot at a dog but they will shoot at a person, the question is if they believe the people are better or worse. Dragan sees that both the dog and him are “only trying to survive.” “Dragan now sees little difference.” How he now equally feels concerned for whoever falls into the firing lines of the sniper, whether that’s “the forty or fifty people” or the dog. This symbolises the dehumanising effects of the war occurring in Sarajevo. The men on the hills think that they are better, think they are different than the animals of Sarajevo. But really they are just “boys throwing bombs instead of balls.” Word Count: 537 How does the author employ the motif of the transformative power of music as a device to demonstrate the moral or human awakening of his central protagonist/s in the text? “When he stepped on stage in his tuxedo he was transformed into an instrument of deliverance.” Galloway employs the recurring motif of the transformative power of music as a way to demonstrate the moral awakening of one of the protagonists of the text, Arrow.
Arrow was a self-given name resembling her unique, strong and linear personality, “she possesses a particular kind of genius few would want to accept.” She gave herself this name to show that she is a weapon. She is trained to kill. She is one with her sniper. But, “Arrow believes she’s different from the snipers on the hills” because until the war she had “only shot at targets.” When Arrow confronts the cellist for the first time with Nermin in order to know about her mission. This immediately creates a contrast between the city that the cellist creates with his cello, compared to the saturated, broken city the war has formed. Seeing the cellist play “is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.” Each time Arrow to protect the cellist from the men on the hills she listens to him play. Doing this every day, it was changing her. Changing her perspective and mind about the war and herself. “She’s beginning to think perhaps she has lost her way, perhaps she isn’t the weapon she was just a few days ago.” The Arrow is beginning to “curve.” “She thinks it all started with the cellist.” “The choices she’s made have left her without choice.” When Arrow was protecting the cellist from the sniper the men on the hills sent, she
did not want to kill him, however, she had no choice, this was her mission. The music the cellist plays is a universal language, his music representing hope. Arrow is no longer a weapon. Arrow is now no longer cares about dying, it doesn’t faze her that she could die at any moment. She’d rather die in her bed comfortably asleep instead of hiding in fear as the men on the hills drop bombs on her. “It’s a small measure of control over an uncontrollable situation.” Arrow now contemplates whether there is a “difference between disappearing and going into a grave.” Does it matter if she finally succumbs to the men on the hills? If Arrow disappears she knows that she would be killing her old self and that she will never come back. Arrow believes that it is possible that the girl she used to be could now return. After Nermins death, another man, known as Colonel Edin Karaman approached Arrow for her very well known abilities. At this point Arrow is hesitant to go with this man, however, for the first time she chooses not to kill, she chooses to go with him and see what he wants with her. When Edin Karaman and Arrow stop at a café he asks, “what is your real name?” but she only reveals herself as Arrow. She realises with this person controlling her every move she no longer has the idea of choice. She understands now that her “skill made her vulnerable.” Arrow now fears that the consequences of the choices she’s made from the past have caught up to her. However, Arrow refuses to listen to the commands of Karaman because now whenever she aims through her sniper all she sees is the sniper she killed. All she hears is the cellist play the harmony of Adagio. “The cellist has confused her.” She refuses to kill anyone anymore. Word Count: 583
Over many centuries, Poetry and song has been a way for people to explore their feelings, thoughts and questions about War & Peace. Rupert Brooke's “The Soldier” and Cold Chisel’s “Khe Sanh” provide two different insights into the nature of war. . “The Soldier” conveys a message of bravery for soldiers to go into war and fight while “Khe sanh” conveys a message about post-traumatic stress and the horrible factors of coming back into civilization after war.
This poem, Sarajevo Bear written by Walter Pavlich, addresses one of the most important themes, the struggle to keep humanity strong and stable. To begin with, this poem is discussing the sniping campaign that took place in Sarajevo in 1993 and how civilians were the targets of these attacks. During this time people faced a dilemma: they could either stay in hiding forever or until the war ended, or they could do something that would get their mind off the war and relieve some of their stress. People knew though the risk of leaving the security and safety of their home as they could be shot and killed at any time without warning. But still this did not stop the people working at the zoo and feeding the bear to stop their job. Furthermore, the first verse of this poem states that this is the last animal at the zoo. This illustrates that just as many people were dying, many animals were dying as well illustrating that our actions not only affect us but they also affect things around us, and in this poem it was the zoo animals. In a zoo the animals are contained within a certain area an...
“Every war is everyone’s war”... war will bring out the worst in even the strongest and kindest people. The book tells about how ones greed for something can destroy everything for both people and animals leaving them broken beyond repair, leaving them only with questions… Will they ever see their family again? Will they ever experience what it’s like to
The hardest one; whether to kill an innocent civilian was a decision that only she could make for herself, however thankfully, she remains moral and ethical and refuses to kill the man. This gut wrenching decision ends up having a tremendous positive effect on her life. When Hasan gives her the order to kill an innocent person those three little words saves the man’s life, but unbeknownst to him kills Arrows’. “No, I won’t” (226) she says and just like that her life changes forever. From that moment on Arrow is on the run for ten days straight. Finally when she was ready to give up running and surrender, she spends her last few days and moments in peace because she knows she makes the right decision. The persona of Arrow is a character that she creates so she would be able to live with the fact that she has to kill people. When she is about to die, “She says, her voice strong and quiet, ‘my name is Alisa’”(258). She refuses to kill for no purpose and because of that her Arrow personality is gone and right before she dies she utters her real name knowing and understanding that maintaining her morals is the only thing that the war does not take from her. Her decision to not let the war take her integrity despite the difficult circumstance leads her to a meaningful end to her
He arrives back at his town, unused to the total absence of shells. He wonders how the populations can live such civil lives when there are such horrors occurring at the front. Sitting in his room, he attempts to recapture his innocence of youth preceding the war. But he is now of a lost generation, he has been estranged from his previous life and war is now the only thing he can believe in. It has ruined him in an irreversible way and has displayed a side of life which causes a childhood to vanish alongside any ambitions subsequent to the war in a civil life. They entered the war as mere children, yet they rapidly become adults. The only ideas as an adult they know are those of war. They have not experienced adulthood before so they cannot imagine what it will be lie when they return. His incompatibility is shown immediately after he arrives at the station of his home town. ”On the platform I look round; I know no one among all the people hurrying to and fro. A red-cross sister offers me something to drink. I turn away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with her own importance: "Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!"—She calls me "Comrade," but I will have none of it.” He is now aware of what she is
Faulks’ ‘Birdsong’ is a novel which spans three different time periods, in all of which we meet characters directly connected to the War. Faulks choice of structure allows us to view the impact of the War from numerous viewpoints as well as understanding its significance today. Faulks uses the structure of the novel as well as language to demonstrate this.
The conflict that the individual faces will force them to reinforce and strengthen their identity in order to survive. In “The Cellist of Sarajevo” all the characters experience a brutal war that makes each of them struggle albeit in different ways. Each of them have their own anxieties and rage that eventually makes them grow as characters at the end of the book. When looking at what makes a person who they are it becomes obvious that the struggles they have faced has influenced them dramatically. The individual will find that this development is the pure essence of what it truly means to be
When the war breaks out, this tranquil little town seems like the last place on earth that could produce a team of vicious, violent soldiers. Soon we see Jim thrown into a completely contrasting `world', full of violence and fighting, and the strong dissimilarity between his hometown and this new war-stricken country is emphasised. The fact that the original setting is so diversely opposite to that if the war setting, the harsh reality of the horror of war is demonstrated.
Tim O’Brien states in his novel The Things They Carried, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat” (77). This profound statement captures not only his perspective of war from his experience in Vietnam but a collective truth about war across the ages. It is not called the art of combat without reason: this truth transcends time and can be found in the art produced and poetry written during the years of World War I. George Trakl creates beautiful images of the war in his poem “Grodek” but juxtaposes them with the harsh realities of war. Paul Nash, a World War I artist, invokes similar images in his paintings We are Making a New World and The Ypres Salient at Night. Guilaume Apollinaire’s writes about the beautiful atrocity that is war in his poem “Gala.”
Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront. One of the most profound effects the war had was the way it made the soldiers see human life. Constant killing and death became a part of a soldier's daily life, and soldiers fighting on all sides of the war became accustomed to it. The atrocities and frequent deaths that the soldiers dealt with desensitized them to the reality of the vast quantities of people dying daily. The title character of the novel, Paul Bäumer, and his friends experience the devaluation of human life firsthand, and from these experiences they become stronger and learn to live as if every day were their last.
While fulfilling their journey, a hero must undergo a psychological change that involves experiencing a transformation from immaturity into independence and sophistication. Campbell states that these events are what ultimately guides a hero into completing their journey by, “leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer more mature condition” (Moyers 1). She first enters her journey when she learns about invisible strength from her mother, “I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games”(Tan 89).
The theme that is very meaningful to me is that war hurts two different parts of a country. The first is the military, which was not really talked about, and then there is the civilians. The civilians must ration food so that the military can eat, and then they must also suffer because the bomb that was dropped was not meant for any military base but to destroy and kill a city. The theme is clear in meaning that it hurts the civilians much more than it hurts the military and that war is very, very cruel. The people that were rationing had very little to eat and that amount
...is story, Hemingway brings the readers back the war and see what it caused to human as well as shows that how the war can change a man's life forever. We think that just people who have been exposed to the war can deeply understand the unfortunates, tolls, and devastates of the war. He also shared and deeply sympathized sorrows of who took part in the war; the soldiers because they were not only put aside the combat, the war also keeps them away from community; people hated them as known they are officers and often shouted " down with officers" as they passing. We have found any blue and mournful tone in this story but we feel something bitter, a bitter sarcasm. As the war passing, the soldiers would not themselves any more, they became another ones; hunting hawks, emotionless. They lost everything that a normal man can have in the life. the war rob all they have.
The simple definition of war is a state of armed competition, conflict, or hostility between different nations or groups; however war differs drastically in the eyes of naive children or experienced soldiers. Whether one is a young boy or a soldier, war is never as easy to understand as the definition. comprehend. There will inevitably be an event or circumstance where one is befuddled by the horror of war. For a young boy, it may occur when war first breaks out in his country, such as in “Song of Becoming.” Yet, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” it took a man dying in front of a soldier's face for the soldier to realize how awful war truly is. Both “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” are poems about people experiencing the monstrosity of war for the first time. One is told from the perspective of young boys who were stripped of their joyful innocence and forced to experience war first hand. The other is from the perspective of a soldier, reflecting on the death of one of his fellow soldiers and realizing that there is nothing he can do to save him. While “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” both focus on the theme of the loss of innocence, “Song of Becoming” illustrates how war affects the lives of young boys, whereas “Dulce et Decorum Est” depicts the affect on an experienced soldier.
The structure of Faulk’s Birdsong allows us to observe the impact of the War upon numerous individuals across the generations. Throughout the novel, even outside the 1914-1918 time-frame, Faulks continues to maintain a link between the past and the present through his use of a number of motifs and themes. The lasting impact of the War suggests that history should never be forgotten, which is the paramount message in Birdsong.