Ishmael Beah Quotes

Ishmael Beah’s character changes throughout the story. He starts out as an innocent ten year old boy that didn’t understand much about the war or realize it would be coming to his village. He then faces his village being taken by the rebels, he is now homeless and must try to survive, making him a refugee. After all that he went through escaping the rebels and other people who wanted to cause him harm, he was captured by the Sierra Leone Military. They taught him how to fight and turned him into a child soldier. As an innocent boy in Mogbwemo, he was going to school and striving to get an education. He never really understood the war, as he said in Chapter One, “There were all kinds of stories told that made it sound as if it was happening in a faraway and different land.” (page 18, line 1) When he, his older brother Junior, and their friend …show more content…
They walk village to village looking for a place to stay the night and food. The boys are starving many days, as Beah says in Chapter Five “We were so hungry that it hurt to drink water and we felt cramps in our guts.” (page 42, line 1) After many times where the boys are being shot at they get separated, Beah is all alone. He gets lost in a forest for many days, starving and afraid. He finds an unnamed fruit and gets chased by wild pigs. While alone he faces the challenge of trying to escape his own thoughts. He finally found his way out of the forest when he came across half a dozen boys who he recognized from secondary school. The boys continue to travel village to village looking for family and food. They become captured by village guards a few times, they often are let free, but with some sort of punishment. They come across a village where Beah’s parents are said to be, but on the way there, it is attacked by the rebels. They almost become victims of the rebels, but escape. They later are captured by the Sierra Leone