3-5

Chapters 3-5
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After reading these 3 chapters, I was even more shocked then the first 2. It was even more brutal and violent than I though it would get to.
In chapter 3, the boys are in the village when the RUF messenger shows up. What I was particularly stunned about was the RUF carved into his skin. This form of branding is barbaric and crude, and yet very affective. He told them the RUF was coming so as to make aware to the villagers the power of the RUF. Another thing that was shocking was that he had all of his fingers accept for his thumbs cut off, to represent “one love”. It was almost sad how they perverted a song into something like this. Later, the messenger keeps coming back, to make the village even more afraid. When the rebels come, everyone starts to flee. Worst yet, the soldiers abandon there post. This was terrible because the people had no one to look to. The RUF was killing everybody and the government would not protect its own people, so it was a lose-lose situation. The boys flee through the swamp, and we start to get a sense of how the boys are starting to care more for themselves than others. They don’t stop to help anyone so as not to get killed, and they don’t slow pace to wait for others so they wont get killed. Ishmeal starts distancing himself from others because he knows that many of them will die.
At the start of chapter 4, the boys are very hungry. They realize that they are going to need money, so they decide to go back to the village to get it. This is very dangerous, because the RUF is looking for boy soldiers. The boys go back and get the money, and are shocked at what else they find. Ishmeal vomits because he sees a man that his been dismembered. They start running back through the swamp, when a patrol shows up. Junior and a few others are forced to lie down and pretend like the dead in the swamp. This troubles Ishmeal because he does not like the look of his brother among the many dead. The boys are able to crawl to the end, and all of them make it. However, one boy who they don’t know who was carrying a bag gets the back stuck. He is seen, and so the rebels start firing at him. The boys tell him to run, but he refuses to leave the bag. The boys never see him again. I don’t know what was in the bag, but I really was shocked at how someone could give up on life to try to get a bag. When the boys get back to camp, there are no venders of food they can use there money with because they have all fled. The boys see a boy eating to ears of corn, and they are so desperate for food that they steal the ears from the boy. Later, the boys mother comes and gives them some corn, and they feel guilty that they stole.
In chapter 5, the boys set out again. On there way, they are captured by the RUF. It was a small search party, but they were armed. The boys are all forced to the ground where they must wait. Only one guard is guarding them until the other RUF members return, but the boys can’t overpower him. He has a gun and they are too weak to be able to charge him. When the others return, something horrible begins. They start the recruitment process. The first time through, Ishmael and Khalilou are selected. Junior, however, is not. Before anything else could happen though, they decide that they want to go through selection again. This time, junior is selected, and Ishmeal is not. This selection was “final,” so then the guards say that to make them less afraid of blood they must now watch there friends die. I was horrified at this, because it felt so unnecessary and cruel. Before they were killed though, the guards heard gunshots in the distance. They started firing in that direction, and the boys made a run for it. They got away, and when they got to a camp, they began to distance themselves from each other because they realized that they could be killed that easily.