Arrow: More Machine than Human?

Ever since we began reading The Cellist of Sarajevo, we’ve been aware that Arrow is different. She has split herself into two: her past self, which now only seems like a distant memory, and her present self, the killing machine named Arrow. Even from just tonight’s chapter, I knew that she was becoming more and more Arrow and less her human self. On page 121, for example, it mentions how she has “reached the point months and months ago at which a person simply can’t feel anymore pain.” And after considering her point of attack and realizing how easy it will be to shoot the enemy sniper, “she smiles” (127). Yet at the same time, Arrow began to have thoughts that filled me with hope, hope that she hadn’t completely lost her human self. She ponders the thought that the enemy snipers “fight against an idea, and that fight manifests itself as hatred. If so,” she concludes, “they are no different from her” (133).
When I read about her observing the enemy sniper, and how he in fact didn’t shoot the cellist, but instead listened to his music and even closed his eyes and smiled, I was confident that she wouldn’t shoot him. I was convinced that she would see him and realize that the cellist’s music had the same effect on both of them. She would realize that he wasn’t going to shoot the cellist. She would realize that he was also human. So when I kept reading, and read “His eyes open, and a small hole erupts between them,” (135-136) I was completely unaware of what was happening. Once the truth sunk in, though, I felt shocked and…disappointed. Disappointed in Arrow. I hadn’t even considered that she would actually shoot him after that initial moment of hesitation. But I was wrong. The only thing stopping her from shooting him was the cellist’s music. But as soon as he played those last notes, it’s as if Arrow snapped out of being human. The connection that she and the enemy sniper had forged through their enjoyment of the music was gone. Arrow was once again only a machine.