Always Children in the Middle

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    The thing Zlata's Diary does best is highlight the fact that in every conflict there are always children in the middle who are damaged by the trauma that they live through. Zlata lives through a war, one that most people have probably never heard of. In the book, Zlata writes that "Some people compare me with Anne Frank. That frightens me...I don't want to suffer her fate" (Filipovic 159-60). So many more people know about Anne Frank because the conflict she found herself caught in was one of the two major World Wars, where million of people died. Anne Frank, unlike Zlata, died and her diary was published post-mortem. But there are so many more conflicts or contentious events throughout history and the world today that are effecting children. Climate change will results in mass migration; children and their family's will be forced to feel the place they have always known because of rising sea levels and unpredictable, violent storms. Systemic racism in the United States has resulted in the deaths of hundreds Black children. And the Trump Administration's policy of separating children from their parents, and then locking them in cages, will cause irreparable damage on the effected children. Zlata's diary is only a brief glimpse into how one conflict altered a child's life forever.

    At the beginning of the book readers see Zlata focusing on the things that most young children care about: playing in her "school recital," what she is going to do on her birthday, and tasing with her friends about MTV (Filipovic 7, 12). But later, once the conflict has taken a hold of her life, and it has taken away so many people and things that she cared about, readers see Zlata has changed significantly in just a short period of time. Instead of talking about how excited she is for something at school, Zlata is instead aware of how many shells are being dropped in the area around her throughout the day (Filipovic 187). Instead of waking up the sound of her bird Cicko, Zlata instead wakes up the sound of people walking down the streets with their water carts, noting on "how inventive people are" because they are using "wheelbarrows, shipping carts, wheelchairs, hospital tables, supermarket carts," and more to carry the water they need for the day back to their homes (Filipovic 159). But, perhaps the most striking think readers see in Zlata's Diary is how Zlata learns to live with the war around her. Zlata says "This stupid war is destroying my childhood, it's destroying my parent's lives. WHY? STOP THE WAR! PEACE! I NEED PEACE! I'm going to play a game of cards with them [her parents]!" Zlata jumps from decrying the war, and everything that it is doing to her and her parents, to saying she is off to play a game of cards. This shows that even though Zlata hates the war, she is learning to live with it, which is one of the most terrifying things in the book. 

Comments

  1. toriehicksNovember 8, 2020 at 8:00 PM

    Yes! One of the most heartbreaking things that I felt through the story was the fact that Zlata had to lose some of the best times of her childhood years to the war. She even explains her life as, "A child without a childhood." (61.) She has to part with her friends, part from her school life, and even lose time with her piano, because it is in a dangerous room. Zlata says, "... We are not enjoying our childhood. WE ARE CRYING." (97.) I was so sad to read the part of her seeing Ismar Resic, a boy who was in love with her in the fourth grade, after puberty. Ismar was "enormous" and his voice was deep. (146.) It is so sad to know that she has not been able to watch her friends grow. By the time she gets to see her friends, they could be totally different, even she will be different. These are things that a child shouldn't have to go through, and you give some good examples of this outside of the diary. I think that adolescents, and even everyone else in the world, is kind of experiencing this through COVID. My heart especially breaks for the students who do not get to go to school. Losing a few years of close contact with peers is heartbreaking; I especially hate it for those who are graduating and going to college. It is my cousin's first year of college, and I hate that she doesn't get the first year of college experience that I got. It breaks my heart. In a way, students today are losing part of their childhood like Zlata.

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