Another Explosion Outside Makes Toma Sparknotes

Anna is characterized by her tough and harsh demeanour. Tomas is weaker and shyer. One piece of evidence from the play supporting this is in Act 1 scene 1 where the narrator quotes “Another explosion outside makes TOMAS tremble”. This piece of evidence proves my interpretation because the Narrator gave no such quotation for Anna, showing that she is toughened by the situation she is in, so much so she doesn’t even flinch at an explosion going on outside, while Tomas is still a weak and timid kid who is scared and confused in the middle of a war, and is only pretending to be tough by doing things like grabbing a weapon, but in reality this is a mechanism his brain has done to at least help him survive for a little bit. Another piece of evidence

One moment in the book to illustrate this is in Act 2 scene 4 page 37-Act 2 scene 5 page 40, in these pages you can see how Anna thought of a woman as her mom, and when she found out her mom was dead, even though in previous scenes she pretended she had accepted it, she still emotionally broke down. To rub even more salt on the wound, Anna finds out that the only bus to take her out of Bosnia is stopped because of the bombing of a bridge, which absolutely crushes her, and then takes out all her rage on Tomas which shows Anna's emotional vulnerability due to the environment she is in. For Tomas there are a lot of examples of emotional vulnerability, the one I will use is in Act 1 scene 1, where Tomas says things like “can’t we just talk about something? !” where Tomas is begging to not sleep without lights and when the narrator states this “in the darkness, we hear distant shelling and the sound of Tomas trying to stifle sobs” this shows how emotionally vulnerable Tomas is because despite being 12-13 he still is about to cry on sleeping in the dark or without a bedtime

This shows that their bond through storytelling has strengthened. This has a contribution in the play, because as mentioned before, this can show great character development as they both start warming up to each other and enjoy each other’s company, I personally think this is important for the reader because it can show even better how they are just 2 scared kids in a war, who deeply rely on each other, and it helps the readers better understand the mental states of the 2. In terms of motivations, they are both also quite similar, they have different overall goals, however these 2 goals are similar in the way that they both have a deep desire to escape the harsh realities of war due to their emotional vulnerability. Supporting this thematic interpretation is in the dialogue is in act 2 scene 5 at the part where Anna and Tomas are at their “base”, they both have a huge argument, and Anna is on the verge of tears (this also ties in with the characteristics), and then this time Tomas tells a story to Anna instead of the other way