Ishmael Prejudice Quotes

At first, Ishmael who is the main character, was a happy child living a normal life among his family in Sierra Leone. However, during the civil war with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), his family got murdered, and he had no other choice than becoming a child soldier addicted to drugs and capable of terrible acts of violence.
Throughout the book, the categorization process appears clearly and lead to different type of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. In fact, at the beginning of the book, Ismael is not a soldier; he is just a lost child wandering the forest from villages to villages in order to survive. Since then, he was already victim of categorization. In fact, he was seen by most of the people as a child soldier since at this time most of the wandering children were soldiers. Consequently, 90% of the people Ishmael and his friends happens to meet, automatically get scared and consequently act in correspondence. For example, in the chapter nine, Ishmael and his friends got attacked by a a group of fisherman assuming they were soldiers. “The fisherman jabbed us with the flat edges of their weapons until we fell on the ground. They sat on top of us, …show more content…
In fact, his friends and him are captured multiple times by civilians that assumed they were child soldiers. However, in that time Ishmael and his fellows had never held a weapon; they were just trying to escape the conflicts to survive the war. The evil deeds and atrocities committed by child soldiers employed by the rebels army or the regular army made villagers believe that every single wandering children was a soldier.This categorization is a perfect example of prejudice. Luckily, every single time, Ishmael and his friends were able to explain their situation to villagers and consequently remain alive since they were considered as innocent and victims of the