A Long Way Gone Ch. 15-16

Ishmael is finally taken out of the war by UNICEF. The commander does not tell the boys what is happening. Instead he just tells them that they are done there and that they should leave. He does this because he knows that if he tells the boys what is going on there will be a big commotion. However, UNICEF makes a huge mistake by placing the army boys and the rebel boys together. And to make things worse, the boys smuggled in weapons with them. These people do not understand what these boys have gone through. All they know is that the boys were forced to fight in the war. But what they do not realize is that these boys may have been forced to fight in the beginning, but now they want to. The armies had become like a family to the boys and they did not want to leave that behind. They enjoyed the fighting and the killing. The boys may have been taken out of the war, but the war was still in them.

In these chapters we here the phrase, "It's not you're fault" over and over again. Ishmael cannot stand when the civilians tell his this. Partly because they were not there and do not know what he has gone through. Ishmael feels that he cannot trust anyone anymore, and that he has to do everything on his own. But he learns that that is not always the best route to take.

Ishmael had been having nightmares about the war and excruciating migraines. Nothing seemed to help. He was going without sleep because he was afraid of what he might see in his dreams. These symptoms were caused partly because of the massive amounts of drugs he had been taking. Most of the boys from the army were going through the same thing. They were going crazy because of their addiction to the drugs.