The novel, “Girl at War” written by Sara Nović, is a book about the life of a girl named Ana who is 10 years old that lives in Zagreb, Yugoslavia during a time of war. Ana and her family are constantly in fear of losing their lives and so they do everything they can to survive. Ana eventually escapes the war by going to America, but the events of the war did affect her and molded her personality as she got older. Ana eventually goes back to Zagreb to get closure and in a way she does. She reflects back at her past and realizes that that the reason she was able to survive the war was because she had a strong and loving family. The theme is that a child that is exposed to war will normalize the uncommon such as violence and due to this normalization
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We see that Ana was a normal innocent girl before the war broke out, she would go to school, do chores, and play with her friends. Naturally, when the first alarm sounds in Zagreb she fears for her life and the life of her family and friends. A thought in Ana’s mind about her best friend, Luka, was “Somehow, the prospect of just him dying was a scarier place that I’d allowed my imagination to go thus far” (22). The first time that we see that Ana is slowly accepting the violence around her is during the period of false alarms which was just before the war broke out. Ana and everyone else did not run to the shelters anymore, but instead they would hide in their house, close their blinds, and sit in the darkness. Ana would treat hiding in the darkness as an intense round of hide and seek (23). To treat a dangerous situation as a game meant that she no longer feared the violence of war. Another scene where Ana treats the violence and dangers of war as a normal occurrence is when she and her friends play the game called War. “War quickly became our favorite game …” (50), in this game they would either play in teams or they would play like a last man standing game. “In both versions, the idea was to kill a person by shooting him with your imaginary gun…” (50). The children knew what was going to around them and to be …show more content…
Ana was in her chemistry class when the 9//11 incident began. While watching the TV live news, one of Ana’s classmates said ‘What kind of pilot was flying that low over New York City?’ (108), this student and most of America taught that this was an accident, but not Ana because she responded by saying ‘What if it wasn’t an accident?’ (108). Ana was right about the 9/11incident not being an accident and she was able to come to this conclusion because in her past, violence and tragic events were never accidental. The people of America decided to show to the world that they were staying strong by taking the attitude, “Fear means letting them win” (110). Ana’s choice of losing her emotions to not feel the pain of war was the correct choice because even America when in shock decided to show less emotion towards the tragic event that had happened. Given all these examples of how Ana lives through violence while slowly losing her emotions, we can conclude that war alters a child personality to be more
We see that Ana was a normal innocent girl before the war broke out, she would go to school, do chores, and play with her friends. Naturally, when the first alarm sounds in Zagreb she fears for her life and the life of her family and friends. A thought in Ana’s mind about her best friend, Luka, was “Somehow, the prospect of just him dying was a scarier place that I’d allowed my imagination to go thus far” (22). The first time that we see that Ana is slowly accepting the violence around her is during the period of false alarms which was just before the war broke out. Ana and everyone else did not run to the shelters anymore, but instead they would hide in their house, close their blinds, and sit in the darkness. Ana would treat hiding in the darkness as an intense round of hide and seek (23). To treat a dangerous situation as a game meant that she no longer feared the violence of war. Another scene where Ana treats the violence and dangers of war as a normal occurrence is when she and her friends play the game called War. “War quickly became our favorite game …” (50), in this game they would either play in teams or they would play like a last man standing game. “In both versions, the idea was to kill a person by shooting him with your imaginary gun…” (50). The children knew what was going to around them and to be …show more content…
Ana was in her chemistry class when the 9//11 incident began. While watching the TV live news, one of Ana’s classmates said ‘What kind of pilot was flying that low over New York City?’ (108), this student and most of America taught that this was an accident, but not Ana because she responded by saying ‘What if it wasn’t an accident?’ (108). Ana was right about the 9/11incident not being an accident and she was able to come to this conclusion because in her past, violence and tragic events were never accidental. The people of America decided to show to the world that they were staying strong by taking the attitude, “Fear means letting them win” (110). Ana’s choice of losing her emotions to not feel the pain of war was the correct choice because even America when in shock decided to show less emotion towards the tragic event that had happened. Given all these examples of how Ana lives through violence while slowly losing her emotions, we can conclude that war alters a child personality to be more