Fishbowl Discussion Notes 1/7/11

Sophie, Eliza, Jules, James, Brian, Joe, Lucian

Who is fighting in "A Long Way Gone"?
There's a rebel group and the Sierra Leone Army.
Is he fighting for the rebels?
No he's so against the rebels.
The people who are not in the Army form militias to resist the rebels but they're not part of the government forces.
I don't get why the rebels are destroying the villages.
They are killing to kill, because they want to exterminate those who don't help him.

Ishmael realizes that living and staying alive is a resistance.
There was the time he was on his knees by the river with his brother and the rebels are distracted and he escapes and hides and begins his resistance.

How old is he during the war?
He's a couple years younger than us.

There were a couple of times he felt like he was totally alone.
When he found out about the rebels killing his family.
When he was with the kid who ate the bird and died.
When he was getting recruited he felt like he had a home again and then later he snapped out of it.
When he was playing soccer in the village and he remembered his childhood, but he realized they were using soccer to try to recruit the boys.
When he was on the run and people he met along the way were suspicious of him because he was a young man and they thought he was a soldier.

I was enjoying it the whole book because he went in depth, but the ending felt abrupt. It felt like it just ended it and didn't explain how he got from the big village to New York.

When they burned his cassettes and they were trying to brainwash him, you expected him to resist more, but ...

Well there's only so much you can take. When he finally has the realization that he's going to kill someone.
He also realizes the power that comes with having a gun and he's afraid of that power.

He's afraid he's going to turn into a killer like the rebels.

I don't feel like he's motivated by revenge. When he gets so used to killing and seeing blood, he seems to become one of them.

When he can't run away he feels trapped.

It definitely made me feel like my problems were small compared to his.