Losing hope is like living in darkness where you ignore the stars. Hope is easily lost in some circumstances when people begin to believe that the situation they are in will never improve or be in their favor. In the novel "The Cellist of Sarajevo", the ongoing war makes the characters lose all hope of living beyond this war and living in the Sarajevo they once knew and loved. Hope is crucial to surviving war, however, in the novel "The Cellist of Sarajevo" by Steven Galloway, the hopeful side of the characters Dragan and Kenan is absent. One of the characters, Dragan, who helped his wife and son escape from Sarajevo. , no longer has any hope for himself. First, Dragan's desperation is highlighted when he talks about pre-war Sarajevo. As Dragan describes it: “The Sarajevo he remembers, the city he grew up in and was proud of and happy with, probably never existed” (Galloway, 33). For people stuck in Sarajevo, like Dragan, the war drags on and seems to have no end. To have hope, you have to be able to hold on to your happy moments and wait for them to return. Dragan, however, doesn't even remember the times when he was happy in this city. Clearly, his inability to remember the old city he loved so much shows his loss of hope. Second, Dragan comes across as desperate when he expresses his opinion about what the cellist is doing. Dragan explains that “what the cellist wants is not a change, nor a making things right, but a stopping of things getting worse” (126). According to Dragan, the cellist doesn't help matters since that is no longer possible. This quote proves that Dragan now believes that the situation cannot return to normal, and things cannot...... middle of paper ...... it just gives men more opportunities to kill him, proves him to be desperate. character. To summarize, as the war continues, Kenan's hope of surviving the war begins to fade away. In conclusion, the characters, Dragan and Kenan in Steven Galloway's "The Cellist of Sarajevo", lose all hope of surviving the war and living their lives. return to normal. The characters forget everything about the pre-war town because they are so fascinated by their lives as citizens trying to survive a war. Dragan is a man who forced his family to flee Sarajevo before the war began and is now fighting to survive in this war zone. Kenan is another man who lives in Sarajevo with his family and risks his life carrying out daily tasks, such as fetching water for the family. Hope is not thinking about all the misery around you, but keeping in mind the beauty that is still intact..