The Color Gray In The Cellist Of Sarajevo

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In The Cellist of Sarajevo, the power of art comes from the cellist and how he made other main characters in the book like Kenan, Dragan, and Arrow feel. And all that is needed for symbolism is the color gray. In this truly sad novel, gray is a commonly thought of color when reading. And this is because it is the color of loss and sorrow. Gray signifies a lack of emotion, sadness, and emptiness. And all of these feelings are expressed within the novel, and Galloway uses this color so many times in this novel because it is about people who are becoming numb to war and who are losing their faith in the days to come. Gray also captures the colorlessness of life during such a horrible situation, life without its usual natural beauty and color that people take for granted. …show more content…

So gray captures the almost endless sadness of this time period for Sarajevo. Galloway’s use of this color a combination of white and black, the colors which can sometimes symbolize good and evil, suggests the moral uncertainty of war, the difficulty of determining who or what, is right or wrong. But an example of the power of art coming from the cellist is found on page 186 in the novel where it says: “[Kenan] stares at the cellist as the music seeps into him. He watches as the cellist’s hair smoothes itself out, his beard disappears. A dirty tuxedo becomes clean, shoes polished bright as mirrors. Kenan has not heard the cellist’s tune before, but he knows it anyway, its notes familiar and full of pride,...” So the cellist’s power coming from his form of art affects people. Things around him like buildings start repairing themselves, which is not possible, but the power of art gave him these

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