Reflections Ch. 15-16

Chapter 15-
Brainwashed into being the perfect child soldier, Ishmael is fiercely loyal to his fellow soldiers and the lieutenant who he sees as a twisted sort of father figure. When he and other boys are chosen to go with the Military Police, they're confused. Why should they, some of the best fighters, go off with people who they believe are sissy city guards? On there way of going to what they soon find to be a rehabilitation center, the boys go through checks where they must hand over any weapons they have. Ishmael and the other young men hide some of their bayonets and grenades in their pockets so they don't have to turn them over. The rehabilitation center is not what they would have believed, everyone all smiles and "it's not your fault's". There is soon a fight between the boys when they find out that a group are rebel boys. Neither side sees that they do not need to fight each other, and yet when the fight is over, at least one boy is dead and the others extremely wounded. The Military Police are not sure how to handle the boys because they have not seen such violence in kids so young before.

Chapter 16-
The brainwashing that the boys went through is shown to the reader even more when they find themselves at a loss on how to function in the "normal" world. They have lived in a world of just violence for so long, that they do not know what to do without it. They need to feel like they are being respected and they only know how to do that through making the civilians they meet in the city fear them. The entire time, Ishmael's migraines and nightmares increase the more he goes through withdraw from the drugs he used to take regularly. These nightmares usually end with him curled up in a ball out in the courtyard where someone from the facility wraps him in a blanket and brings him back inside; all the while telling him that things will be okay. As the days go by, Ishmael fights them less and less when this happens.