When I decided to explore Aleksandar Hemon’s motives for writing Love and Obstacles, I discovered that the Bosnian War was of much importance for many of his works. I then did more research to understand how the war began so that I could relate it to the story. I found quite a few similarities when I thought about it. The war started when Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from the Yugoslav Federated Republic. This event sparked up a conflict that would become very destructive for those involved. This reminded me of the narrator from Love and Obstacles. On his journey alone to obtain a freezer that his father so desperately wanted, the teen decides to take advantage of his situation. He decides that he is going to act independently and eventually start his own life away from his parents. His first experience out on his own landed him with severe consequences. His attempts to find a woman who will take his virginity result in trouble for him when he comes off too strongly in a couple of situations. In the first attempt, he is chased through the streets for following 2 women all around town in pursuit of them. Then, when he sees an American woman in the hotel he is staying in, he offers her a contraceptive pill in hopes that she will get in bed with him. Extremely offended by this, she reports him to the desk clerk of the hotel, who barges into his room and kicks him repeatedly. This mirrors the events of the Bosnian War in that his attempts for independence landed him with consequences. Not only does he fail in his endeavors, but they were all for nothing. Shortly after obtaining the freezer, the power in Sarajevo is cut off and all food items in the freezer thaw and spoil. This event in the story marks the beginning of the war.
A timeline of the events of the war is helpful in relating it to Hemon’s writing:
http://selenasol.com/selena/struggle/bosnia_timeline.html
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