Summary Of Sara Novic's Girl At War

Milk starts off being this idealistic white and “pure” substance, but over time the once “pure” substance becomes clumpy and spoiled. Milk cannot control the outside forces that affect the pureness of the milk. The same idea of letting the surroundings affect the pureness or innocence of something is shown through the story in Sara Novic’s book, “Girl at War”. The book goes through a time of war in Croatia and focuses on one particular family, especially one character, to show how war can shape their future. Novic introduces a main character named Ana, who throughout her life has to deal with her past of living through the civil war in Croatia. Throughout the book Ana is shown making decisions that are the direct effect of her history with …show more content…
The structure of placing another flashback after the second section is intentional of showing another traumatic experience, but also symbolizing dealing with the past. The third section goes through a moment after Ana experiences her parent’s death. During this time, Ana ends up in another town of people and she meets a new family. While staying with this new family at first, she stays hesitant to open up to them of the events that preceded her arrival. Ana chooses not to speak, but a bond does begin to form with the son of the family named Damir, who ends up being a part of a resistance group. Ana seeks her innocence within this new setting. She begins by heading to the resistance group’s hangout and also slowly gets comfortable with the new family. However, her stay with this family is cut short when a raid happens with the enemy soldiers. Ana experiences Damir getting hurt and she also shoots another soldier, which morally scars her. Bringing this flashback after the events in the second section, where she goes to the areas where her traumatic events happened, symbolizes the start of her dealing with her past and therefore gaining that innocence back. The transition from the second to third section shows how after struggling with confronting with her past trauma in the first two sections, the third sections shows that those events of her past are being dealt with. Going into the fourth section, Ana and Luka are still travelling to these places of traumatic background, but by doing this it gives Ana the closure she needs to have in her mind. The conclusion of the book represents the start of innocence growing after struggling with the trauma. A representation of the innocence growing can be seen in the very end when it says, “It calmed me, just like it had when we small,” (316). She finally feels a peace with the place that she