The Rebels who had No Business Killing Innocent People

          I will be talking about one of the key themes of the story which is how the war was unfair for the village people and the Rebels just assuming they were voting for the President that they did not like. The part of the story that I will be reflecting on is when the Rebel forces invade Manarma which is where the people from Magborou had fled to to try avoid the Rebels earlier, and when Mariatu had her hands chopped off. This part is important because Mariatu was totally unaware about why the Rebels were attacking, but she knew one thing about the Rebels that might have saved her life. Her aunt Marie once told her that if the Rebels liked what you have seen to always say yes, or else, you too will be killed. So, when the Rebel who had shot a pregnant woman asked if Mariatu liked it she somehow found a way to say yes and just like her aunt said, they let her survive. The man who she had told that she liked seeing the killing then decided to let her go but not before having three boys the same age as her slash her arms off. With one of the boys saying "Which one of your hands do you want to lose first." She also tried telling the boy that she liked him and asked why he would want to kill someone who likes him, he said "Because I don't want you to vote." After Mariatu heard that she was going to lose her arms she came to a conclusion that she would rather die and she begged the boys to just kill her instead. But one of the boys said, "We want you to go to the President and show him what we did to you. You won't be able to vote for him now. Ask the president to give you new hands." Once the boys carved her hands off and at the end of the chapter, and right before she passes out, she remembers asking herself, "What is a president?" From that, we can infer that Mariatu was not the only person living in Sierra Leone who didn't know what was going on politically, and that the Rebels had no right killing and torturing people who were totally innocent.

          I have had similar experiences with getting punished before I was able to explain myself, though the consequences weren't nearly as harsh, such as taking a penalty in hockey that I did not deserve and having to sit in the penalty box for two minutes. In my mind that is kind of what happened to Mariatu as the Rebels assumed she would have voted for the president when really, she did not even know what president meant, like the referee assuming that I did something to a player on the opposing team and taking me to the penalty box. A similarity between what is happening in the book and in real life right now is Isis as they too, torture beat and kill people who are not like them. The last thing that the Rebel's attacks reminded me of was some footage of World War 2 when the Nazi's took the jews to concentration camps and also killed and tortured them just because Hitler did not like them and they were not like him. These things all have one thing in common. They shouldn't happen.