Back Cover Discoveries

As I was reading The Cellist of Sarajevo, I decided to take a look at the back cover. This is what I found: "The Cellist of Sarajevo brilliantly explores how war can change one's definition of humanity, how music affects our emotional endurance, and how a romance with the rituals of daily life can itself be a form of resistance."

While the first two were fairly self-explantory, I found it was interesting that it also mentioned "how a romance with the rituals of daily life can itself be a form of resistance". I decided to look back through the text to examine this. I found this to be the case mostly in Kenan's life. It was true that just by getting water, Kenan was indeed resisting the siege. The fact that he even bothered to continue going about finding ways to survive in a time when survival rates were slim illustrated the constant fight that was still living within him even when people were dying left and right for merely crossing a bridge. Then I began thinking about resistance in a broader sense. It occurred to me that perhaps just by trying to live life normally could have been a way of resistance. Then I thought about the Holocaust and the discussion we had in class about why the Jews did not try and resist the Nazis. If they were constantly looking for ways to continue surviving and not completely giving up even after they were persecuted, was that considered resisting? And then I thought: well what does it really mean to resist? Does it mean that you had to take a gun and shoot those who are trying to kill you, as Arrow does? Or does it really just mean crossing a bridge and risking your life to continue getting the necessities that are essential to daily life, such as water? I think these are all forms of resisting, albeit some more evident than others.