Layering Time in Narrative, Long Way Gone

Below are  ten  paragraphs from  a  chapter of a book , A Long Way Gone, about a boy who leaves his home village in Sierra Leone one day and finds he can no longer return as rebels take over the territory.  In this chapter, Ishmael and his friends find a temporary haven in Kamator, a farming village, where they are allowed to stay in return for their farming efforts.

What can we learn as writers about Ishmael’s style of writing in these paragraphs.  Please do the following.

Noticing Time:

For  each  paragraph,    in  the  margin  of  the  paragraphs,  tell  what  aspect  of  time  or  change  each  new  paragraph  represents.    Use  the  number  code  below.    Here  are  your  choices  for  “paragraph  change”:

1.                 past tense, talking about many days of a certain time period (“continuous past,” such as “would tense”)

2.              past-past tense (childhood memory)

3.               “one day,” one day in particular

4.               a combination of time:  writers combines one day in particular and continuous past (the writer just goes back to the  continuous past very briefly, and scoots back to the immediate story right away)

5.              the writer indents to set off dialogue

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10.          Kamator was very far away from Mattru Jong,   where the rebels were still in control,   but the villagers were on guard and ready to move anytime.  In return for food and a place to sleep,   the six of us were appointed watchmen.  Three miles from the village was a big hill.  From the top,   one could see as far as a mile down the path toward the village.  It was at the top of that hill that we stood watch from early in the morning until nightfall.  We did this for about a month and nothing happened.  Still,   we knew the rebels well enough to brace for their arrival.  But we lost our vigilance to the gradual passing of time.

11.          The season for planting was approaching.  The first rain had fallen,   softening the soil.  Birds began building their nests in the mango trees.  Dew came down every morning and left the leaves wet and soaked the soil. The odor of the soaked soil was irresistibly sharp at midday.  It made me want to roll on the ground.  One of my uncles used to joke that he would like to die at this time of year.  The sun rose earlier than usual and was at its brightest in the blue,   almost cloudless sky.  The grass on the side of the path was half dry and half green.  Ants could be seen on the ground carrying food into their holes.  Even though we tried to convince them otherwise,   the villagers grew certain the rebels weren’t coming,   and so they ordered us from our scouting posts and out into the fields.  It wasn’t easy.

12.          I had always been a spectator of the art of farming and as a result never realized how difficult it was until those few months of my life,   in 1993,   when I had to assist in farming in the village of Kamator.  The village inhabitants were all farmers,   so I had no way to escape this fate.

13.         Before the war,   when I visited my grandmother during harvest season,   the only thing she let me do was pour wine on the soil around the farm before harvest commenced,   as part of a ceremony to thank the ancestors and the gods for providing fertile soil,   healthy rice,   and a successful farming year.

14.         The first task we were given was to clear a massive plot of land the size of a football field.  When we went to look at the bush that was supposed to be cut,   I knew tough days lay ahead.  The bush was thick and there were lots of palm trees,   each surrounded by trees that had woven their branches together.  It was difficult to get around them and chop them down.  The ground was covered with decayed leaves that had changed the top color of the brown soil to dark.  Termites could be heard rummaging under the rotten leaves.  Every day we would repeatedly stoop and stand under the bushes,   swinging machetes and axes at the trees and palms that had to be cut lower to the ground so that they wouldn’t grow fast again and disrupt the crop that was to be planted.  Sometimes when we swung the machetes and axes,   their weight would send us flying into the bushes,   where we would lie for a bit and rub our aching shoulders.  Gibrilla’s uncle would shake his head and say,   “You  lazy town boys. “ 

15.          On the first morning of clearing,   Gibrilla’s uncle assigned each of us a portion of the bush to be cut down. We spent three days cutting down our portions.  He was done in less than three hours. When I held the cutlass in my hand to start attacking the bush,   Gibrilla’s uncle couldn’t help himself.  He burst out laughing before he showed me how to hold the cutlass properly.  I spent restless minutes swinging the cutlass with all my might at trees that he would cut with one strike. The first two weeks were extremely painful.  I suffered from back pains and muscle aches.  Worst of all,   the flesh on the palms of my hands was peeled,   swollen,   and blistered.  My hands were not used to holding machete or an ax.  After the clearing was done,   the bush was left to dry.  Later,   when the cut bush was dried,  we  set fire to it and watched the thick smoke rise to the blue summer sky.

16.            Next we had to plant cassava.  To do this,   we dug mini-holes in the ground using hoes.  To take a break from this task,   which required us to bend our upper bodies toward the ground for hours,   we fetched cassava stalks,   cut them into shorter pieces,   and placed them in the holes.  The only sounds we heard as we worked were the humming of tunes by expert farmers,   the occasional flapping of a bird,   the snaps of tree branches breaking in the nearby forest,   and hellos from neighbors traveling the path either to their own farms or back to the village.  At the end of the day,   I sometimes would sit on a log at the village square and watch the younger boys play their wrestling games.  One of the boys,   about seven,   always started a fight,   and his mother would pull him away by his ear.  I saw myself in him.  I was a troublesome boy as well and always got into fights in school and at the river.  Sometimes I stoned kids I couldn’t beat up.  Since we didn’t have a mother at home,   Junior and I were the misfits in our community.  The separation of our parents left marks onus that  were visible to the youngest  child  in our  town.  We  became  the  evening  gossip.

17.       “ Those  poor boys, ”  some would say.    “They aren’t going to have any good complete training, ”   others would worriedly remark as we walked by.

 I was so angry at the way they pitied us that I would sometimes kick their children’s behinds at school,  especially those who gave us the look that said,   My parents talk about you a lot.

18.         We farmed for three months at Kamator and I never got used to it. 

The only times that I enjoyed were the afternoon breaks,   when we went swimming in the river.  There,   I would sit on the clear sandy bottom of the river and let the current take me downstream,   where I would resurface,   put on my dirty clothes,   and return to the farm.  The sad thing about all that hard labor was that,   in the end,   it all went to ruin,   because the rebels did eventually come and everyone ran away,   leaving their farms to be covered by weeds and devoured by animals.

19.         It was during that attack in the village of Kamator that my friends and I separated.  It was the last time I saw Junior,   my older brother.

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Also to note: 

• What  I    was  thinking  to  myself  at  the  time  such-and-such  was  happening.  .  . 
• a  routine  or  process  described    (see  par.    14);  a  break  in  the  routine  (par.  18)
• one  or  more  descriptions  of  “first  time.  ..  “
• the  way  dialogue  is  used,  even  when  it  is  not  from  specific  people  (e.g.    Some    would    say)
• ironies  and  contrasts
• foreshadowings  and  prior  “echoings”