Cause Of 'Emotional Trauma In Ishmael's'

Ishmael becomes emotionally traumatized due to the overwhelming situations he goes through on a daily basis. An example of this can be found in chapter six. After the boys travel to Kamator, they are welcomed by Gibirlla’s (a boy traveling with Ishmael) aunt. She offers the boys food and a place to sleep in exchange for acting as the village’s watchmen. The boys spend about a month in that village, and cling onto the hope that the war is over. Then, as if on cue, the rebels burn the village to the ground; leaving everything lifeless and the boys without a place to call home. To make matters worse, during the attack, Ishmael lost someone who he loves and cares for, someone who took care of him; it became “the last time [he] saw Junior, [his]
older brother” (Beah 43). What Ishmael witnessed is not something anyone can take lightly. During this chapter, Ishmael saw the destruction of a village and lost some of the people he cared for. Ishmael went through a very overwhelming situation because he witnessed something that nobody in their life should see, and in the process of finding safety, he lost his brother in the chaos.
What causes Ishmael to be emotionally traumatized is the fact that he lost his family throughout the course of the war.
In chapter 11, Ishmael and his friends start to approach the village in which they were told their families are living in. They encounter a banana farmer whom Ishmael knows named Gasemu. Gasemu leads the boys to the village, but they hear gunshots, people screaming, and dogs barking. They all go to the nearest bushes to hide. They watch the horror until the gunshots stop. Then, Ishmael runs to the village an starts to look for his family. He sees the village in flames, and burned bodies that were barely recognizable. Gasemu shows Ishmael the hut in which Ishmael’s family was staying in. Ishmael enters but only sees “heaps of ashes; no solid form of a body” inside the hut (Beah 95). Ishmael’s big hope is to be reunited with his family. Once that's taken away, it's tough for Ishmael to start hoping about anything else again and his emotions take control of him. After discovering what his family’ fate had been, Ishmael screamed at the top of his lungs and began to cry as loudly as he could, punching and kicking the walls of the hut with all his might. His emotions overwhelmed him so much that he attacked Gasemu and blamed him for what happened to his family. Discovering dead family members would be traumatizing for any child his
age.
Lastly, Ishmael is emotionally traumatized by all the terrible things he sees. In chapter 8, Ishmael keeps walking alone to survive. He passes through remains of villages filled with copious dead bodies and red rivers from blood. He sees the terror on the victims’ faces and it just makes him walk faster. He finds himself in a dense part of the forest and feels safe for the first time in months. His loneliness es is overwhelming, but he listens to the sounds of nature, which luckily drowns out his terrifying memories. He begins to resist falling asleep because he fears that his “suppressed thoughts would appear in [his] dreams” (Beah 52). He fails miserably, however, since he cannot control his flashbacks and nightmares. Because of all the terrible things he sees during the course of the war, he cannot even sleep because the traumatic things he has seen keep popping up in his mind against his will.