They Would Never Hurt A Fly Analysis

Slavenka Drakulic’s book, They Would Never Hurt a Fly, looks at people who commit crimes of extraordinary evil and if these people are ordinary everyday people or monsters. In our reading she looks at the Bosnian Genocide, specifically focusing on the case study of Goran Jelisic and a Bosnian Serb sentenced to 40 years in prison for the death of over one hundred people in which only thirteen could be proven.

Many of the descriptions of Jelisic show signs of what we have learned about perpetrators, but many of them are inconsistent. What we normally learn is that the perpetrator has been forced or in a society that pressures obedience. Instead, we look at a perpetrator who had a normal childhood and lived in a society that did not force, violence or obedience like we have seen in previous studies. Like in much of our reading we learn that Jelisic was an ordinary person before the genocide. His past consisted of normal aspects on would consider for a young man. He enjoyed fishing, going dancing with girls, and drinking with friends. He was considered to be a quiet man from a working family, such normal aspects of most young men's lives that would never be found outside of the norm.
When he was asked if he ever felt sorry for the fish that he was catching and killing he responded “that it never occurred to him that he could feel anything for the fish. It is the law of nature that rules, and fish are lower beings… if not they would be catching us” (71). I think this shows disassociation, it may not be the pure aspects of the us versus them mentality but it is a start. It shows is dishonest and lack of care for anything he sound lower than