Essay on the novel S of the novel by Drakulić. Essay

Name
Course
Date
S., of the novel by Drakulić
The Balkan tragedy presented a number of horrific revelations. Out of all, the most concerning was the rape ordeal in the Serbian-run confinement camps. Croatian and Muslim women and young girls put in custody in the concentration camps were sexually assaulted and abused. The women and girls put in “women’s room” fell on the hands of sexually hungry predators. They were subjected to multiple sexual assault and abuse.
Slavenka Drakulic decided to interview the victims of the war following the war. She was keen on obtaining accurate information regarding the experiences of the survivors. She had planned to publish the accounts as open as she had received them but later opted to discard the documentary technique and narrate her victims’ accounts through a fictional novel. The fictional woman S. goes through tribulations for a period of six months.
Slavenka starts the narration in a maternity ward of a hospital in Sweden. At the hospital, the main character, S., and a political refugee has delivered a baby boy. The author examines the controversial delivery accustomed by genocide and gross violation of the subject’s rights. The event is portrayed as a violation of both personal and political freedom manifested by violent sexual assault and forced paternity.
“From the day she learned that she was pregnant, there was nothing she hated more than this creature” (Drakulic, P.,5). All the while S. has felt nothing less than innate disgust of herself. She compares the feeling with “…. a disease, a burden she wished to get rid of, a parasite she wanted removed from her organism.” (Drakulic, P.,6). S. appears as a disturbed woman suffering from self-hate. Her revulsion feeling is complemented by her comparing the pregnancy with a “tumor” that has led to a malformation in her body which she hugely hates. The compulsive decision by S to bathe after delivery stems from her extreme obsession “...with a sense of dirtiness” (Drakulic, P.,8). Besides, she is strongly convinced that she will never ever “be clean.”
In page 8, Slavenka takes her audience back through to ten months before the beginning of the terror. In late May, the Serbs took Bosnia under their protectorate. At that time, S., a 29 years old woman worked in Bosnia as a schoolteacher. The author illustrates a scene of a victim's perspective of rape and plunder. Not a scenario of a war among soldiers. In page 9 Slavenka writes, ''Somebody simply opens the door of your apartment and war enters your life, enters you.'' Slavenka writes about how S.’s neighbors and familiar faces intrude other person houses. The swift change of people from neighbors and acquaintances into perpetrators is absolutely scary.
Moments like those when a teenage soldier carrying a gun and in torn sneakers as unclean and camouflage pair of shorts makes his way into S.’s house is frightening. It portrays a period of complete disregard to law and the person’s right to freedom. She gives teenage soldier coffee to calm the situation she finds herself and make the environment comfortable. S. even tries to talk to the “boy” like a teacher conversing with a student to send away the tension...