A Long Way Gone Ch. 13-14

After reading these two chapters, I was surprised at how quickly things changed! At first, Ishmael was so scared of the fact that they were going to be shooting rebels and going into 'battle'. In the first fight that the soldiers had with the rebels, Ishmael could barely even move. He literally had no idea what to do. He just kind of became immobilized. Then, to make things worse, he sees Josiah who is close to death on a tree stump. This just broke his heart. Later he found out that Musa had also died. But, when the corporal took him out of his daze and told Ishmael to shoot, Ishmael did just that. After that day, he didn't really think about killing people. It just kind of came to him. He didn't exactly think about it, but when he did, it was because he was thinking about how the rebels had killed his family. That angered him to kill more. But that never made him feel any better. In chapter 14, the soldiers start to do major drugs now. It's even worse though, because the soldiers were taking the drugs all at the same time. The drugs they were using was; cocaine, brown brown, white capsules, and marijuana. Ishmael became addicted, as did the other soldiers. At the camps they would watch war movies, do drugs, eat, sometimes sleep, and take turns guarding the perimeter of their camp. In a way for Ishmael, killing became somewhat of a game. Ishmael was the winner of a contest to see which soldier could kill the prisoner the fastest by slitting their throats. It is sad to see how his life is rotting away slowly, by him doing drugs, killing without thinking about it, and other things. These two chapters were the most graphic of what I have read. So far, though, Ishmael Beah is doing a wonderful job of depicting these scenes so clearly so that the reader feels as if he or she is experiencing it themselves. Although, the readers experiences aren't even half as bad as what Ishmael had gone through.