76 pages • 2 hours read
Steven GallowayThe Cellist of Sarajevo
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Essay Topics
Choose a character and consider the journey they make throughout the novel. How does their journey reflect the journeys made by mythical heroes?
Discuss the importance of trauma in this narrative. Who is most traumatized and how? Are these traumas mentally or physically obvious? How has trauma contributed to each character’s journey? Discuss the character for which you think the trauma of the war has been a wholly transformative experience.
The technique of chiaroscuro – the use of light and dark as a tool—is more closely associated with painting than literature. How does Galloway use this technique throughout the novel? To what effect?
The use of color is important in this novel. Where does Galloway use bright colors and where does he deprive the narrative of color and how? How is the color gray, in particular, important to this novel? Why does Galloway use gray in this way?
Galloway’s novel is infused with a stark sense of symbolism. Analyze one or more of the novel’s symbols and discuss how it contributes to the novel’s themes?
Redemption is an important aspect of these characters’ stories. Who achieves redemption in this novel? Was it foreshadowed by their experience in any way? What seemed to be the turning point for them – a point at which the character had to confront something within them that needed to be overcome in order to achieve this redemption?
Research adagios and sonatas and explore how Galloway’s narrative reflects qualities of these types of musical composition.
Galloway has stated in interviews that each character in this novel--Dragan, Arrow, and Kenan-represent the past, present, and future of Sarajevo. Discuss.
Every character retreats from the world in one way or another to cope with the horrifying reality of the present. Every character in this novel uses rituals or certain coping skills to help them to survive. Pick a character and discuss what their rituals or habits help them to achieve and whether or not they keep them from living fully.
On page 145 of the novel, Kenan classifies Sarajevo’s citizens in terms of how they have responded to siege:
“Kenan is able to identify three types of people here. There are those who ran away as soon as the shells fell, their instinct for self-preservation stronger than their sense of altruism or civic duty. Then there are those who didn’t run, who are now covered in the blood of the wounded, and they work with a myopic urgency to help those who can be saved, and to remove those who can’t to go to whatever awaits them next. Then there’s the third type, the group Kenan falls into. They stand, mouths gaping, and watch as others run or help. He’s surprised he didn’t run, isn’t part of the first group, and he wishes he were part of the second.” (145)
How does Kenan’s classification apply to the characters in the novel? Is Arrow a helper covered in blood or a blood-thirsty killer?
