Journal 6 - Payton

I have really liked a lot of characters in this book but one that stood out to me the most would be Ester. She was Ismaels nurse when he arrived at the rehabilitation center and he really enjoyed talking with her. Ismael had many issues from surviving the war and when he first arrived at the rehabilitation center he did not want to work with everyone trying to help him. At first he didn’t even want to work with Ester but he eventually found out that he could trust her and that she wanted what was best for him. He spent a couple years at this place and one thing that stood out to me about Ester was that she had tears in her eyes when Ismaels uncle Tommy came to pick him up. She cared for him that much that she was so excited to know he was going to have a loving family to go home to.

I feel that Ismael has the potential to be fully rehabilitated. He has had a very rough life being a child soldier and experiencing traumatizing things from the war but he is making progress. At first, he would start fights in the cafeteria and beat up the guards on duty that day if they made him mad but he eventually started to calm down. He began to trust certain people like Lesley and Ester and even made some friends who he had known before entering rehab. It would be hard at first to trust Ismael into my neighborhood but some people have had traumatizing events happen to them but that’s doesn’t mean they can’t recover. I would be okay with letting him into my neighborhood and long as he kept making steps in the right direction toward a full recovery and cause very little problems.

I think Beah uses many writing techniques throughout the whole book and i think he uses them all very well. The one that stood out there most to me would be his use of foreshadowing. At the end of almost every chapter he gives us something that makes us want to never put the book down. He was always giving hints about what his journey was going yo involve next. Once I finished reading th book i realized that many times Beah would even relate chapters that weren’t next to each other. After you would read you would notice how these chapters actually related. I think his use of
foreshadowing really helped me to understand the book as a whole.

My favorite passage from the reading was in chapter 15 and on page 129. It states “ You have been great soldiers and you all know you are part of this brotherhood. I am very proud to have served my country with you boys. But your work here is done, and I must send you off. These men will put you in school and find you another life.” I felt that this was extremely important because it symbolizes that this chapter in Beahs life is coming to an end and that things may look up from here. It also shows how much the Sargent has values Beah as a soldier and how much work he has done for their group. It also stands out to me that this may cause problems for Ismael because all he has ever known has been fighting. It made me want Beah to make a full recovery from the war and I wanted him to be able to live his normal fifteen year old life.