Journal 4 Michael McGinnis
I think a scene that Beah chose to over dramatize in Chapter 15 is when UNICEF shows up to the government camp and took some of the child soldiers away. Beah talks about how mad he was when he got selected to be taken away by them. He also talks about how he and another boy tried to plan an idea as to where they could kill all the soldiers guarding them and the truck. Then go to the base camp where they came from and continue to fight. This scene in the book is completely dramatic and dramatized by Beah. He will figure out that it will be a good thing for him and that it isn’t the end of the world. However his mind has been brainwashed by the government army and that makes him angry. It makes hum angry because he wanted to keep fighting in the civil war and try to help them win. Yet deep down and we know that it will work a lot better than it would have if he was still fighting.
We see a dramatic change in character in Beah in chapters 12 and 15. Beah goes from an innocent kid trying to survive a war. To all the sudden being a child in the exact war that he was already trying to survive. I think that Beah’s shift in character was so sudden, due to the fact that he had to grow up. This was it, he had to grow up and learn how to survive and that so happened to be in the military’s army. He let himself become a killer because the military government brainwash kids into thinking that this was right and that it was fine. He let himself become one only to survive. He knew that at some point it was either shoot your shot or be shot. A lot of that is what we see in these 3 chapters and a lot of that would continue as the war progressed. It will be interesting to see how this will affect him as we read more of the book.
I completely agree with what you said and I like how you explained and talked about the dramatic change in the innocence of Beah, and also the part when you said "shoot or be shot" because that really stands out as a big part of these past few chapters.
ReplyDeleteHey Mike
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that Beah change personality. In the beginning of the story Beah was portrayed as an innocent child. I believe that Beah had to learn to kill or be killed. For example Beah writes, “Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two lifeless friends, I angrily point my gun into the swap and killed more people”(119). I feel that Beah is completely changed.
Hello Michael, I do agree with everything you said. If I was in Beahs shoes, I would adapt fast and realize to grow up. I would learn the basics of war, and try to stay away from being a anti hero.
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