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Summary: Chapter 3
In Mattru Jong, Ishmael, Junior and Talloi wait and hope that their families are well. The rebels send two messengers, one after the other, to announce that the rebels are coming to Mattru Jong and must be welcomed. The first messenger, a young man, has had all his fingers cut off except his thumbs. He has had the initials RUF—for Revolutionary United Front—carved onto his body. After each messenger, the townspeople flee into the forests, but when the rebels do not arrive, they drift back and resume normal life. Suddenly, one day, the rebels sweep into town. The government soldiers guarding the town have already abandoned their posts; they had learned of the coming attack and knew they were outnumbered. The townspeople flee in a panic. They do not want to be used as human shields when the rebels defend the town against government forces later. Some of the people drown trying to cross a river to flee, and some civilians are killed by the rebels. The six boys know that if they are caught, they will be forced to fight for the rebels. However, the boys run fast enough to escape.
Summary: Chapter 4
The six boys sleep in abandoned villages and find some cassava and fruit here and there, but soon hunger drives them back to Mattru Jong. The boys hope to recover some money Ishmael hid in Khalilou’s house, money that could be used to buy food. The boys hide from two rebels who pass by, escorting a group of women carrying food and cookware. Khalilou’s house has been looted, but the boys recover the money from its hiding place. They leave town again, as part of a larger group. The boys are pleased when the group reaches a crowded village, but soon they discover, to their disappointment, that the cooked-food vendors in the market have stopped selling. The money the boys risked their lives for is useless. At night, the boys steal food from sleeping villagers.
Summary: Chapter 5
When the six boys see a small boy eating corn, they chase him down and take the corn from him. Knowing that the boys are desperate, the boy’s mother gives them each an ear of corn. Eventually, hunger drives the boys back toward Mattru Jong again. However, they are captured by three rebels, who march them back to a village they just passed. The boys are added to a group of people, mostly children, being held at gunpoint. The rebels humiliate an old man. Finally, the rebels do what they came for: they select recruits to fight with them. At first, Ishmael is picked and Junior is not, but then the rebels declare that the recruits they chose are “sissies,” and start over. This time, Junior is picked and Ishmael is not. The rebels prepare to execute Ishmael and the others who were not chosen, but they are interrupted by gunshots coming from near by. As the rebels respond, Ishmael runs into the forest, where all six boys reunite. The boys decide to leave that area and go someplace far away and safe.
Analysis: Chapters 3–5
Jumping back to Ishmael’s early childhood, Chapter 3 brings up the recurring motif of atrocities committed in war. While the boys wait in Mattru Jong for the fighting to be over, a messenger sent to Mattru Jong from the rebels has RUF (Revolutionary United Front) carved into his body and all his fingers are missing except for his thumbs. The rebels also kill civilians indiscriminately as they flee the town. When the rebels suddenly arrive in Mattru Jong, the soldiers casually toy with the boys’ lives, and nearly execute Ishmael on a whim. Clearly, these soldiers are used to committing atrocities, numb to their own ability to torture others. This motif is a bitter pill to swallow, but Beah does not shy away from vivid description of the atrocities he witnesses. This memoir is not one to mince words or avoid unpleasant topics. The terrible atrocities catalogued by Beah are meant to show the horrors of war in all its inhumanity.
At this time in his narrative, Ishmael can’t see the moon in the sky, symbolizing a loss of a happy childhood as the horrors of war eclipse his previous peaceful life. The boys seem to mature quickly as well, proving quite resourceful as they survive hunger and the constant threat of rebel forces, finding food, hiding, and avoiding capture. But even though the moon is missing from the sky, Ishmael’s innocence and humanity isn’t yet diminished, as his reaction to finding several dead and mutilated bodies in an abandoned village proves. When Ishmael sees the bodies, he vomits and feels sick. With no moon in the sky and no families to go home to, Ishmael and the boys are truly robbed of their innocence as they disappear into the forest to escape death and torture.
The chaos of war is thematically introduced by Ishmael’s strong desire for someone to blame for his new and terrible situation. Despite this urge to blame a single entity, Ishmael must acknowledge that in times of war, things change so rapidly that it’s clear no one person or group is truly in control. The worthlessness of the boys’ money in Mattru Jong is another indication of this lack of control. And when the boys are captured by rebels, a scene between a child soldier and an elderly man highlights one especially chaotic element of this war: children as soldiers. Armed children in service of the rebels threaten and humiliate an elderly man who, in another time or situation, would command the boys’ respect. One child soldier paints the letters RUF on the buildings of the town as a blunt pronouncement of the rebels’ control. But Ishmael reflects that the child probably didn’t even know the alphabet, only the letters R, U, and F. While this child should clearly be in school and not in a rebel army, the chaos of war has led him and his companions to this terrible point.
As if to counteract the horrors the boys have witnessed, a woman they encounter shows them kindness, further developing the theme of unlikely kindness in times of war. Facing starvation, the boys steal corn from a child they find in their hunt for food. But despite this theft, the child’s mother gives each of the boys an ear of corn from her small supply. It is clear there is no benefit to the woman for giving Ishmael and the boys food, but she feels pity for the starving boys, rather than labeling them as thieves. The author will continue to give examples of small kindnesses shown to him and his friends by strangers despite the horrible acts of war all around them that they cannot prevent. The boys eventually decide to leave the area and wait out the war, showing that they are still innocent children and have no appetite for going to war.
