111 pages • 3 hours read
Zlata FilipovićZlata's Diary
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
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Chapter Summaries & Analyses
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BetaApril 1993-July 1993Chapter Summaries & Analyses
April 1993, Entries 127-133 Summary
School returns, but it does not raise Zlata’s spirits. Though she maintains high grades, her acceptance of the situation wears thin. The family bird dies, casting a pall over the family. Her father buries him in the garden, but the empty cage sits in the apartment, and Zlata misses his cheerful singing more than ever.
Nedo continues to bring Zlata sweets and food from his job for UNPROFOR, and family friends occasionally send care packages to replenish the family’s dwindling stocks. Chocolate especially lifts their spirits. In mid-April, evictions occur across Sarajevo, raising the possibility that Zlata’s aunt Seka and her family, whose home in Otes was previously razed, will lose their new place in their friend Bokica’s apartment. Many refugees have moved into the apartments of friends and family who went abroad, but officials now plan to move new refugees into abandoned homes. Zlata sees no sense in evicting one refugee family to house another.
Zlata rages that the war is stupid and that she's starting to feel as though she will never escape the city or the conflict. She confesses that she does not know whether it is worth enduring further hardship or if it might not be better to die by suicide. She has outgrown many of her clothes, and because there are no stores, she must use clothing left behind by her friends Martina and Matea. Being in Martina’s empty room triggers memories, and though she finds clothing and shoes, the ordeal saddens her.
Sniper fire kills a family friend in his garden. More neighbors arrive, relatives of Emina and Samra named Haris and Alemka who are also refugees from Grbavica. Nedo has allowed them to stay with him. Haris and Alemka just married, and Nedo was the best man at their wedding. The family congratulates the newlyweds and welcomes them to the neighborhood, but the sniper who guards the bridge peppers the street and disrupts their good time.
May 1993, Entries 133-144 Summary
May 2 marks the anniversary of the first day of shelling. Zlata continues to struggle with boredom and depression despite maintaining high grades. She passes the time reading, sometimes paging through cookbooks to feel as though she has eaten. The Vance-Owen Peace Plan falls through, and Zlata reflects on how removed politics is from people’s everyday lives. She feels dividing the country between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims will not help because nobody supports the idea.
A mouse moves into the family’s house, terrifying Zlata’s mother. The family and neighbors spend time trying to catch the mouse, but even Cici, the cat, fails to kill it. The mouse continues to scratch at the walls and create small drama throughout the month of May, until a glue trap ends their ordeal.
After a trip into the city, Zlata describes the underground market of stolen and missing goods and marvels at the cost of things. She wonders who could afford an egg for five Deutsche Marks. She mentions that people have planted vegetables everywhere, including windowsills, balconies, and flower gardens. Nedo leaves to visit his girlfriend in Austria. He brings back as many treats and gifts as he can.
In late May, officials evict Aunt Seka. Zlata’s mother must help her pack both her things and Bokica’s to make way for a new family. Unable to contact Bokica in Dubrovnik, the family stores whatever they deem worth keeping. Shelling continues as the weather improves. On May 31, Zlata writes that the family endured 2,000 shells. The family spends the whole day and night in the cellar, emerging to another power outage. Because it is Bairam, a holiday, Zlata cannot even escape to school.
June 1993, Entries 144-149 Summary
Zlata recounts June birthdays without the enthusiasm of earlier entries. Not only has the gas been cut, resulting in a cold lunch and dinner, but power is out and Zlata writes that she and her family are at the end of their rope. Again, she raises the possibility of suicide and wonders whether one of the snipers might not end her life first.
Though she and her school friends gather for fun, she writes that it is not what it once was. Many activities are impossible, including dating and other adolescent milestones. She recalls seeing a boy, Ismar Resic, who had once had a crush on her in fourth grade. He has changed since then and is now much taller with a deeper voice, which she finds “UNBELIEVABLE.”
By mid-June Zlata receives copies of the published section of her diary. Though she is proud, she reminds herself that she must not brag, but keep writing well. By late June, Nedo tells the family that he plans to go on another vacation and not return. Though he has promised to send the family packages as often as he can, Zlata feels crushed.
July 1993, Entries 149-159 Summary
Zlata suffers from both a sprained leg and Nedo’s departure while awaiting her diary promotion. With everyone leaving, she takes comfort rereading the many letters she has received. She shares snippets from each, all filled with well-wishes and sadness that she is still living in such difficult conditions. Though she looks forward to new letters, they are a poor substitute for her missing friends.
Because of power and gas outages, the promotional event is delayed. On July 17, Zlata attends a presentation at Cafe Jež to promote her diary. Film cameras and photographers from overseas attend and take pictures of her while she gives a speech and poses in front of jerrycans.
After this event, reporters from overseas visit Zlata regularly. She becomes an international person of interest. She ends July describing the inventive ways people in her neighborhood carry heavy loads from the water station; she wonders why more people have not come to film what is happening in the city, as there are many interesting subjects.
April 1993-July 1993 Analysis
By the April anniversary of the war and May 2 anniversary of Zlata’s first day of shelling, Zlata’s tone and outlook exhibit exhaustion and despair. Regarding school, she writes that it is “not what it used to be, but it doesn’t matter” (127), indicating not excitement for her studies, as before, but a sense of duty. The lessons have simply become a way to pass the time. The war saps her energy and spirit, and the sudden loss of one of her beloved pets, Cicko, piles upon the list of things wrong with the world. She writes, “I miss him, he’s left a big gap. I keep thinking I am going to hear his lovely song, but there is no Cicko and no song. But life goes on” (129). After all the death she has seen, Zlata has learned to persevere, even if it is without joy or belief in a better future: Hope and Perseverance do not always coincide. Her response is all the more striking for the fact that the loss of a pet so commonly contributes to children’s growing up. Zlata’s experience Coming of Age During War is both similar and different; though far from her first encounter with death, the loss of Cicko still hurts.
The Absurdity of War becomes even more difficult to cope with as the nonsensical cruelty extends to the governmental response. In a moment of anger following the eviction of Aunt Seka—a paradoxical attempt to house those without homes by evicting others without homes—Zlata sees no good in the world. She writes, “I really don’t know whether to go on living and suffering, to go on hoping, or to take a rope and just…be done with it” (130). Her hopelessness has grown too cumbersome to bear. Zlata has lost her innocence and is weary of the world.
Even as her hope falters, however, Zlata reaches deep within herself and finds the will to persevere. Lessons of survival surround her: The kindness of her family and friends, the interest of journalists in her story, and the city itself all encourage her to keep going. She writes, “Windowsills and balconies have been turned into vegetable gardens. Flowers have been replaced with lettuce, onions, parsley, carrots, beets, tomatoes, and all sorts of things” (139). These symbols of hope, however, contrast starkly with messages of assured destruction, such as the shells that “[pound] away from four in the morning until ten at night” in a barrage that she figures amounts to over 2,000 shells (143)—2,000 reminders of death and suffering.
In a speech on her promotion day, she likens the feeling of war with that of a “swimmer who was made to enter cold water against her will” (155). Like the swimmer, she has “less and less strength to keep swimming in these cold waters” (156), the metaphor encapsulating the competing impulses she feels to keep going and to give up and let herself sink.
