Literary Criticism: The Cellist Of Sarajevo By Stephen Galloway

Literary Criticism Essay
(Hook). The Cellist of Sarajevo, written by Stephen Galloway, is a fictitious piece of history that follows the lives of three diverse characters in the Bosnian War that takes place in the mid 1990s. Galloway’s writing style exhibits exceptional imagery that traps readers into an authentic representation of war. It is all accomplished with an effective use of the third person omniscient limited point of view to dive into what it feels like to live in a wartorn time period. However, his organization can leave readers confused due to his unclear use of time, and often leads them to ponder what point the character Kenan is at during the novel when comparing him to the other main character, Arrow’s, timeline.
Galloway’s vivid imagery is the main component that successfully creates the feeling of an authentic war environment. In the middle of the novel, readers are shown the harsh reality of war through imagery. Kenan, a middle-aged husband and father, finally makes it to the only water source available to him, the brewery. Kenan almost completes filling up all his containers when the “men on the hills” attack the brewery with shells. “On the pavement in front of him there is a foot. The shoe is

undamaged, as is some of the sock.

It doesn’t look real. Then he sees a woman holding her leg, stunned, as if she doesn’t believe it either. She looks at Kenan and begins to shriek, points at her leg where her foot used to be” (Galloway 160). By reading this piece, imagery brings a very

crystal-clear gory image to the mind. For some readers, it can make their stomachs twist from the mental image of the woman’s severed limb. This successfully places the audience into a world of war that is not sugar coated. Many authors often skip over the bloodshed and gore which creates a false representation of how war actually is, and Galloway’s use of imagery certainly does not hold back on giving the reader the most genuine war experience as possible. Not only does Galloway use the text device, imagery, to provide the reader with insight on what the main characters are seeing, he also uses the third person omniscient point of view to give insightful information on how the characters are feeling while living amidst the Bosnian War.
Galloway’s decision to write in third person omniscient point of view is another element in the novel that provides personal insight into the main character’s emotions during this wartorn time in their life. In the very beginning of the novel, Arrow, a young sniper serving on the ___ side of the war, is fuelled with a rage that one cannot tame. “So when Arrow pulls the trigger and ends the life of the soldiers in her sights, she’ll do so not because she wants to, although she can’t deny that she does… ‘I am Arrow, because I hate them. The woman you knew hated nobody’” (Galloway 12,13). Since the reader is able to tell what the main characters are thinking and feeling throughout the novel, you can see just how war can affect people differently. While many become very fearful during this time, Arrow becomes enraged. She is filled with such a hatred that she needed to change her name, so the person she was would not be changed in the way the war has changed her. Using the omniscient third person point of view is a clear strength in Galloway’s novel. However, there are a few flaws in it as well (change this).
An evident flaw with Galloway’s novel is the way he organized the timeline. In particular, one of the central characters, Arrow, her story takes place over a number of days, but Kenan`s only takes place over a number of hours. Since the book is organized in a way that the three characters circulate in order, it makes a reader confused to exactly what day each of them is on. It also creates the feeling that Kenan`s story is taking place over a much longer period of time, and can give off the feeling that his story is being prolonged much longer than it needs to be since it is in such a small fraction of the time period that is taking place (Need quoted evidence).
Galloway`s representation of war in his novel is without doubt outstanding due to his effective use of imagery that captures the reader into a life-like warzone, and his use of point of view gives the reader insight that provides the reader with feeling characters experience during the duration of the novel which only adds to its authenticity. His only stumble is his organization. Galloway`s novel has its strengths and its weaknesses, but without doubt it shows an audience that war is not as heroic as it may seem. War is ruthless and disgusting. There are no true heroes in war, only people who wish to survive, and people who wish to kill the enemy, because they have taken pieces of themselves from them. (Needs something else here).