So far the character that has meant the most to me so far is Esther. Besides the fact that she plays a small role in the book, i.e not a lot of dialogue or events that occur with her, but her character is crucial to bringing Ismaels emotions to light, and rehabilitating his broken mind. He kindness and smile was able to break through the hard outer layer that had been built up on Ismaels mind because of being in battle, at first he resents her, but he comes to like her, admitting on pg.181, "I loved her but never told her." as he asks how someone like her could remain so strong after hearing all the things that these children had been through. He looks up to her.
I do believe that Ismael is able to rehabilitated. I can understand the reason why he acted the way he used to, being violent and careless, as well as being distressed about his past and the anxiety that now comes because of it. I believe that as his life goes on, his mind will heal, but only because he would find a way to cope with them. Personally, if he were to live in my neighborhood, I would go out of my way to try and be friends with him, but only if he shows that he's still working on rehabilitating himself. If he chooses to give up and continue to be violent, I would say the opposite.
I found myself highlighting almost every instance of violence in this book, purely because I cannot get over the rawness of the world that Beah describes through the eyes of his young self. His graphic descriptions are real and horrifying, and shows how someone can become completely desensitized from witnessing scenes like this on a regular basis and he does a great job at describing that process that happened to himself.
Pg.54 as Beahs father used to tell him, "If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die." I like how Beah included this in the beginning of the book, as almost a foreshadow that he did make it out to experience a better day and something good. As it was only the beginning of his life, I hope that he has been able to continue on, experiencing the good things that life has to offer, not warfare.
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ReplyDeleteI feel that your best paragraph is the third one when you talked about what all you highlighted I also highlighted a lot of the harsh moments in the book for the same reason and i still can't believe how harsh and cruel the world was at this time. I can only imagine what they went through.
ReplyDeleteI liked your last paragraph the most because I didn't think that the passage could be foreshadowing until I read your last paragraph and how it describes it being foreshadowing.
ReplyDeleteI liked your last paragraph the most because I didn't think that the passage could be foreshadowing until I read your last paragraph and how it describes it being foreshadowing.
ReplyDeleteYou do a good job explain who another important character is in the book. Esther had a major impact to getting Beah back to normal and being a boy again. I feel that without her Beah wouldn't of been able to be rehabilitated and start his new life.
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