Loss
Ana's life during and after the war is characterized by loss. The struggle of her adult life is to make peace with her grief and anger at the political world which took so much from her so young. Initially, the war's voracious appetite is content to remove some of Ana's comfort. The family must live on food rations, participate in air raid drills, and conform to increasingly mandatory forms of patriotism. Next she loses her innocence. When Luka, her best friend, starts suspecting Ana's family of being on the wrong side of the war. Loyalties are questioned. Ana learns from Luka's behavior and transformation how powerfully fear can affect somebody. His hatred toward her forces Ana to recognize the human potential for change and evil. When she loses her parents, Ana is made a child soldier in the Serbian military. In addition to the grief of losing her parents, she also loses her freedom. Ana becomes the slave of her captors, her only hope of regaining herself in performing her duty perfectly. By the time she has grown up and decides to attend college in New York City, she has become untethered from any touchstones she enjoyed as a child. In response to the concepts and people taken from her, she challenges herself to forgive the past.
Loyalty
Croatian patriotism becomes the modus operandi of Ana's city. With the threat of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the Croatians are desperate to maintain some sense of control. They adopt wartime habits which signal loyalty. Everything becomes branded and symbolic -- cigarette brands, facial hair, interpersonal greetings, etc. While they are loyal to their homeland, Ana's family is not fooled by the fake devotion which most of their neighbors demonstrate. They do not feel compelled to put on a show of adoration, which causes their frightened and jealous neighbors to suspect them of being traitors. This places their family in a very precarious social situation, which Ana notices when Luka is removed from her life. Losing a friend to such shallow standards as these causes Ana to question the value of true loyalty. She discovers that Croatia means almost nothing to her, an idea reinforced during her time as a child soldier. Of course, she loves her home and misses it daily, but this does not mean that she's agreed to support any delusions about the merit, power, or integrity of her country.
Grudges
As Ana grows up in her war-torn environment, she starts accumulating grudges. From food rations to her captivity by the Serbians, she holds a list of things which she resents about her childhood and adolescence. Unwilling to abandon the anger for fear of losing her identity, Ana struggles to adapt to life after the war. She's angry with everyone around her, but she's just misunderstood the purpose of that anger. She is justified in condemning those events which robbed her of country, parents, and freedom, but she cannot remain trapped in the past if she is to fulfill her present or build her future. Forced to deal with her emotional pain and trauma before pursuing an ordinary life, she decides to return to Croatia. By walking through the physical places she remembers from her youth, she is able to reconcile the present to the past. She notes how much her hometown has changed. Rather than clutching onto those feelings of bitterness and anger, she chooses to surrender them. She is a survivor, but the past cannot inform her present any longer. It is a part of her identity, but she must resist the corrupting transformation of grudge-holding in order to actually enact vengeance -- in the form of living a healthy, balanced life despite the trauma she's experienced.
