The bridge on the drina

A detailed Summary of The bridge on the drina

The Bridge over the Drina: The Indomitable Spirit of the Region

"Thus the generations renewed themselves beside the bridge, and the bridge shook from itself, like dust, all the traces which transient human events had left on it, and remained when all was over, unchanged and unchangeable."

Picture a huge, pale, stone bridge, straight and narrow, with 11 arches spanning over a wild river. This river is the Drina, which flows fast and wide in Eastern Bosnia. The Drina's water is green with minerals from the mountains that rise steeply on both banks. It is in the town of Visegrad that we find this great bridge which crosses the Drina River. It is here that the bridge becomes the life, and the spirit of the region in which it was built.

This bridge stands at the center of Ivo Andric's novel, The Bridge on the Drina, an epic without a hero, though populated with dozens of striking and colorful characters. These characters include Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Their fates all inextricably intertwined with the fabled bridge. "The bridge on the Drina River serves both as a seed of mistrust and a vehicle for unity between the Christians and Muslims in B

Through great floods and windstorms, plagues and battles, Serbian rebellions and Turkish retreats, the bridge survives. It stands until the advent of the first World War, the indomitable spirit of the region. Long after peace settles over Bosnia, if it ever comes, the stories, and the image of this bridge will stay with everyone.

Ivo Andric grew up in Visegrad just below the bridge in a house on the Drina's edge. He played around the bridge as a child, learned the legends associated with it, and as a writer, found the bridge to be an inspiration. (Gjelten)

"In it's walls the birds nested, and in the invisible cracks opened by time grew little tufts of grass. The yellowish, porous stone with which the bridge was built, hardened and contracted under the ultimate influence of moisture and of heat. Eternally beaten by the wind which blew up and down the river valley, washed by the rains and dried by the fierce heats of summer, that stone in time turned white with the dull whiteness of parchment, and shone in the twilight as if lighted from within. The great and frequent floods, which were a heavy and continual menace to the town, were unable to do anything against it." (Andric)

In the spring of 1992, the bridge once again was an execution site. This time local Serbs were killing Muslims. Their aim was to eliminate the local Muslim population or terrorize them into leaving on their own. Trucks would come in the nighttime and park on the middle of the bridge. People would be taken off the trucks and made to line up on the bridge. Then they would be shot by the Serbs and thrown off the bridge into the Drina River. (Gjelten)

Construction of the bridge began in the late 16th century by t

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Approximate Word count = 1152
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History