Connections in Sarajevo

Andy Vo
9/24/08
Period 2
Connections in Sarajevo
 The story “IND AFF or Out of Love in Sarajevo,” by Fay Weldom, tells a story of a student who is dating her professor in Sarajevo, the same Sarajevo where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, to show a connection with the setting and the theme. Weldom uses setting to connect the girl in the story to Gavrilo Princip, the man who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The setting also allows the reader to connect the actions of the girl and the actions and reactions of Princip. Through the connections with the setting of modern day Sarajevo and the time of the assassination, Weldom gives readers the message that rash actions will cause consequences. 
 Through setting, Weldom shows that choices made during times when one has not yet come under to his or her senses can cause large consequences. The narrator keeps looking back when the assassination was taking place because Princip loved his country. Princip’s sudden choice to kill Ferdinand caused forty million people to do, but it was “so long as he loved his country” (202). If Princip never shot Ferdinand, other events could have happened, such as “some undisclosed unsuspected variable, might have come along and defused the whole political/military situation and neither World War I nor II would ever happened” (206). His actions caused the start of World War I and the elimination of a “whole generation, and their children, and children’s children, and so on and on forever” (207). The girl’s story takes place in the same country as well with an uncontrollable love. The girl swears she loves Professor Piper, who is with her on her trip. She swears that she loves him, even though it is obvious is a horrible person to be with. Being in Sarajevo, allows her to contemplate her choice in loving him and the choice that Princip made in loving his country. She made her decision to go back home and leave the professor. Without being in Sarajevo, she wouldn’t have examined her actions and compared it to the actions of Princip. Sarajevo allowed her to come to her senses and make a more rational choice.