Indledning
Around the world, a lot of people’s everyday lives are affected by war. This was also the case for the author Tea Obreht. Tea Obreht was born in Serbia.
With her family, she moved to the states to escape the warfare going on in Yugoslavia1. She sheds light on this in her short story “The Sentry”.
This essay is going to be analyzing “The Sentry” by Tea Obreht and will mainly be focusing on the characterization and relationship between the characters.
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Uddrag
Given the main characters name - Bojan - which is a common name in Serbia2 and given the fact that the author grew up in Serbia, we can assume that the story takes place in Serbia.
You could also assume - because of the father’s involvement in the military, and the fact that he returned from the front, that summer (1. 2) - that the events might take place around the time of the Yugoslav wars in the 90s3.
The story uses a third-person narrator. This becomes clear from the very start when the story reads “Bojan had never had a dog. He had spent...”.
The use of the pronouns he, and the use of Bojan’s name, shows that the narrator is talking about the characters in third person. The narrator has limited omniscient and can only see into the thoughts of Bojan.
This is indicated when Bojan meets the dog, and the text reads “The dog was much larger than he had expected...”.
This shows us that the narrator knows what Bojan is expecting and therefore also what he is thinking and feeling.
The story is told in retrospect, this is shown when the story reads “He remembered it for years afterward....”.
The events happened years before and are being told looking back on. The narrator knows how the events unfolded, and how the characters’ lives turned out later.
Bojan is the main character in the story and the narrator has access to his thoughts. This means that - most of the time - the way the other characters in the story are portrayed is through Bojan’s thoughts.
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