How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
In the morning the rebels broke into the house and found his parents and three sisters. Saidu had climbed to the attic to bring down the remaining rice for their journey, when the rebels stormed in. Saidu sat in the attic, holding his breath and listening to the wailing of his sisters as the rebels raped them. His father shouted at them to stop, and one of the rebels hit him with the butt of his gun. Saidu's mother cried and apologized to her daughters for having brought them into this world to be victims of such madness. After the rebels had raped the sisters over and over, they bundled the family's property and made the father and mother carry it. They took the three girls with them.
"To this day, I carry the pain that my sisters and parents felt. When I climbed down after the rebels were gone, I couldn't stand and my tears froze in my eyes. I felt like my veins were being harshly pulled out of my body. I still feel like that all the time, as I can't stop thinking about that day. What did my sisters do to anyone?" (10.57-58)
In one of the book's most difficult passages, Ishmael can understand now why Saidu seems so quiet and beaten down by the war. He has lived through some unspeakable things and has been totally traumatized.
Quote #5
When we got to the back of the line, there were four men lying on the ground, their uniforms soaked with blood. One of them lay on his stomach, and his eyes were wide open and still; his insides were spilling onto the ground. I turned away, and my eyes caught the smashed head of another man. Something inside his brain was still pulsating and he was breathing. I felt nauseated. Everything began to spin around me. One of the soldiers was looking at me, chewing something and smiling. He took a drink from his water bottle and threw the remaining water at my face.
"You will get used to it, everybody does eventually," he said. (12.1-2)
The sad part about this is Ishmael will get used to it when he becomes a soldier himself. It's tragic how quickly violence and death become normal when it's all you see.
Quote #6
The lieutenant went on for almost an hour, describing how rebels had cut off the heads of some people's family members and made them watch, burned entire villages along with their inhabitants, forced sons to have intercourse with their mothers, hacked newly born babies in half because they cried too much, cut open pregnant women's stomachs, took the babies out, and killed them… The lieutenant spat on the ground and continued on, until he was sure that he had mentioned all the ways the rebels had hurt every person in the gathering. (12.29)
In order to kill your enemies during wartime, you have to believe that they deserve it. This was what the lieutenant was trying to convince the boys to think—the rebels were evil murderers who did horrible, gruesome things. It had the side effect of scaring the boys to death.