Language And Imagery In The Cellist Of Sarajevo

The visual I have created is meant to display how the author Seven Galloway effectively used descriptive language and imagery in the novel The Cellist of Sarajevo to demonstrate character development in Dragan, one of the protagonists. For instance, in the first image moving forward from the 12’oclock section of the clock, we can see an image of Dragan in Sarajevo with the intent of setting the mood of war, where “everything around him is a peculiar shade of grey”. This imagery is meant to display not only the visual cast set upon Sarajevo in a time of war, but also to show Dragan’s internal demeanor and how he initially perceives the world around him, while the idea of a ‘grey’ world surrounding him outlines his pessimistic worldview. These ideas are also manifest in the following image, where we

can see that again Dragan’s initial pessimistic viewpoint lead him to avoid contact with people who he once knew, for fear that “they would both be reminded only of how much has been lost”, where the description of Dragan actively avoiding contact with others significantly demonstrates how he begins in a pessimistic and hopeless state where he allows the war to completely change his way of life. However, these ideas are contradicted in the next image where we see he notices “[Emina] hasn’t been covered in the grey that colors the streets”, suggesting Dragan’s first exposure to what he perceives to be someone unchanged by the grey cast of war. The imagery of Emina standing out from the bleakness of war is significant because it demonstrates the inciting event for Dragan that lead to his evolving mindset and views on the world later on. Next, the following picture shows Dragan “motionless, frozen” on the intersection, which is mostly significant because of how the description of Dragan standing motionless in the street corresponds to a change in his character. To explain, it is evident from the three previous images that Dragan has been exposed to two different states of war- the bleakness caused from the melancholy mood as well as people such as Emina who continue to keep aspects of their previous identity despite the desolate city around her. I believe that placing images regarding Dragan being uncertain after his exposure to those is a stylistic choice by the author to demonstrate how Dragan’s mood at this point in the novel is ambivalent, therefore showing how he has changed since the first image where he had been certain the war had a hold on everything around him. Furthermore, the next two images are meant to demonstrate epiphanies throughout the novel that had shaped Dragan’s final mindset and choices.

The first image shows Dragan dragging a dead body off the streets with the corresponding quote explaining how he understands that “there’s right and wrong… the world is binary”. The idea that the world is ‘binary’ is significant because it brings up imagery of black and white, with no shading, which visually contrasts with his ideas beforehand where he stated the war made everything around him appear gray. This outlines how Dragan’s idea on the had changed overtime, while before he believed he was in the ‘shaded region of war’ and that he was not on one side or the other, he now believes that there are only two sides that he could be on, which are right or wrong with respect to the civilians of Sarajevo and the snipers on the hills. The following Image serves to strengthen Dragan’s new mindset, where he notes that if the citizens of Sarajevo are “contempt to live with death… the Sarajevo will die”. This demonstrates how he believes the world is binary, and those who do not stand for Sarajevo are ultimately supporting it’s

downfall. This idea is strengthened by the images of Emina’s bloody coat and the man who refused to help her off the street lying dead, as Emina’s life is seen to be more significant since she continued to hold onto her identity from the past Sarajvo, while the man who failed to help and allowed the war to make him live in fear ended to just be another man who blends into the gray of the streets. Finally, we can see in the last image how the events and ideas throughout the novel lead to his change overall, as we can see he walks through the streets to demonstrate how he also chooses to hold on to aspects of his identity in past Sarajevo in order to honor his idea that it is the only way to help Sarajevo in its current state.
Furthermore, there are also several personal stylistic choices used in my visual that I used to deepen my understanding as well as to help create insightful interpretations of the imagery shown. For instance, my decision to make a clock and increase the size of images as they progress. The purpose of this was to visually demonstrate my personal interpretation of the text, as I noticed as time progressed throughout the story, the narrator began to pay more attention to small details, such as the camera man filming the streets or Dragan beginning to think on a critical level on what he can do to preserve aspects of his past identity, as shown in the visual. Personally, I find that the gradual development of depth throughout the text demonstrates a more careful and steady analysis of events throughout the book, and thus I decided to make the increments of time between images larger to represent that literary approach. Also, I also used different methods of coloring and shading on the clock to help outline and develop the ways in which Dragan transformed as a character throughout the novel. Specifically, I used color to represent aspects of Sarajevo before the war such as Emina’s pill bottle or her coat, outlining Dragan’s exposure to his former identity before he turned to pessimism and hopelessness in a time of war. On the other hand, I used black and white to represent the bleakness of war the pessimistic state Dragan resorted to in the time of hardship. This is significant because we can see that although at first Dragan himself was colored in black and white, over time after exposure to elements of his previous identity and the epiphanies presented in the 5th and 6th images, we can visually see a change in his color to show the specific events that shaped Dragan from resorting to pessimism and hopelessness to the caring, optimistic and hopeful person he is presented to be in the end. Moreover, the border of the clock is also intended to help mirror and allow viewers to interpret Dragan’s character development in an insightful way. To explain, for the approximate first third of the clock’s border, we can see that it is shaded in monotone grey, which is intended to mirror Dragan’s initial mindset, which is evident in how he describes his surroundings are gray as well as the fact that he is colored in grey himself. Next, for the following portion of the border we can see that the grey fades into 2 separate white and black strips, which are meant to represent Dragan’s mindsets and epiphanies during the corresponding stage of his transformation. We can see in the pictures that he describes the world to be ‘binary’, where the two sides of the world are right and wrong. Although it is not completely evident which side he is on, we can see from the understanding of this concept that Dragan no longer consideres himself to be, metaphorically, surrounded by ‘the grey of war’, as instead his mindset is represented by the binary colors of white and black representing the opposing sides one may be on during war. Finally, we can see that the two separate strips of color fade into plain white for the final portion of the clocks border. This is significant because it represents Dragan’s final transformation over the course of the novel, where he chooses to be patriotic for Sarajevo by resorting to optimism and hoping for a better society. The white represents the side Dragan ultimately resorted to, as throughout the visual you can see that I colored the top of the hills, where the enemy snipers would be, black. I chose to do this to further the dichotomy of the two shades and their significance in the visual, and by choosing white, which represents purity, it was evident the white was the color to represent Dragan’s new optimistic and patriotic mindset.