Journal 5 by Hannah

In chapter 15, the boys have been fighting a lot. In these couple chapters, I noticed quite a bot of diction. Towards the end of the chapter, I noticed that Beah started using new words to express the fight in a different way. He stated, "The jubilation was stopped by a group of MPs..." (Beah 136). He also used other words to express his emotions, like when he said at the beginning of chapter 16, "It was infuriating to be told what to do by the civilians." (Beah 138). Also in chapter 16, the lieutenant gave him the nickname "Green Snake" and then compared him to nature. I think that relates to how Beah was writing throughout the entire book. He'd compare a lot to nature and also mentioned many times how nature is going with the flow of what's happening during this time. Like it knows there's a war going on.

Back in high school, I had a friend that I was in marching band with. She was younger than me. She always had such a bubbly personality and an amazingly positive attitude. She was a great leader. Right after football season during her senior year, she started hanging out with the wrong crowd and eventually started dating a guy who had a bad influence on her. He convinced her to get into hard drugs with him and then she ended up dropping out of high school. I had kind of drifted away from her as she was going through this transformation. One year later, we ran into each other at one of our mutual friend's daughter's birthday party. Well we started catching up, and that's when she told me about everything that had happened. But by that time she had found a different boyfriend, who I had already been friends with for some time. She also decided to work for her GED, already started her career, moved out on her own, and now she's engaged and planning their wedding. They had asked me to be a bridesmaid. The guy she is engaged to had also went through a similar situation. So I think after they found each other, they helped build each other up and are encouraging each other to accomplish many things.