Bel Canto was inspired by a real hostage situation at the Japanese embassy in Peru in the 1990s, from which only one hostage was rescued. Patchett does not relate any of those events, but she used her knowledge of that crisis to incorporate certain elements into her plot. The book won several awards for literary merit and was read in an opera award show because of the centrality of opera to the main character.
Because of the amount of time that the hostages and terrorists must remain together, they develop relationships between their ranks. The unique nature of their interactions is dictated by the tense level of occupation. The general doesn't want to harm the hostages. In the same vane, the hostages start to feel affectionate toward their captors, even paternal to some of the younger ones. Children play a role in the plot because, not fully appreciating the danger of the situation, they lighten the atmosphere and don't conform to the strict lines between captives and captors. As the story progresses, they characters all fall into increasingly relaxed routines.
The relationships that develop between borders deepen as time goes by. Lovers are made and allowed to meet secretly in the night. Adolescents find mentors. Tragic backstories are revealed. Overall, the people on both sides of the argument are humanized. Through all of this interpersonal connection, Patchett is trying to communicate that people who do bad things are still people. Maybe their actions aren't commendable or are difficult to understand, but they still are doing the things they do based off their life experience and convictions. When the novel ends, all the hostages are gunned down by the military. The blind stubborn government busts int he door and assumes it knows best. The captors would have stood down if given the chance, so the true tragedy of the story is that they decided they didn't like what they were doing but weren't given the chance to act on that conviction.
