These chapters showed how extensively the damage that the war has had upon Ishmael. To think he's only a year older than I am in this part! He's gone through more than any normal person could imagine in a full life.
Ishmael can hurt and kill remorselessly and is willing to get into fights at the slightest provocation. You see that with his first encounter with Mamba. He fights and maybe kills two or three rebels without blinking an eye. What I thought was interesting was that the way the rebels recruited the children. They say that the army killed their family so they should join the rebels to fight against them. Switch the words rebel with army, and you have the same exact strategy that the army uses to recruit rebels. Everything just goes around full circle.
It bothered me that Ishmael and his friends attacked those people from UNICEF that were trying to help them, like the guy they stabbed in the foot. He just came back after recovering and said simply that it wasn't their fault that they did such things. I think I would be too afraid of the kids and what they are capable of doing to come back and just smile at them; saying that it wasn't their fault even after being beat up and almost killed by them.
They have also become bloodthirsty, too. Ishmael says that the violence calmed them down and made them content. This shows how much the war has impacted them, being child soldiers. This just freaked me out a bit.
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Hey, i no what you mean, he is the same age as me and he has gone through pains that hopefully i will never go through. In these chapters you really see his addiction and it hard to cope with
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