TOW #4- IRB

     They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky is the retelling of three Sudanese boys' experiences during  Sudan's Civil War, and the miraculous journeys they went through in order to stay safe from the central government.  When the Dinka tribe gets word of nearby villages being attacked by government troops, the families are torn apart in the turmoil.  With no direction to turn, Benjamin finds himself traveling with a large group of boys his same age, eventually finding his cousins including Benson.  Out of desperation, the boys left their village on a trek to Ethiopia, leaving their families behind and never looking back.  So far, Benson, Alepho, and Benjamin have successfully been able to show the hardships of the Sudanese people and the "Lost Boys" through the unique transitions of their different  perspectives of the situation, and the shocking reality of their many anecdotes.
     Separated in the midst of the chaos, the story alternates between each of the boys and their point of view during the war.  Although each of the boys are experiencing many of the same feelings- confusion, desperation, grief, and distraught- it is very effective to see each individual perspective.  With each boy traveling on a different route and persevering through different obstacles, the effect of an rotating viewpoint allows the reader to have a more open outlook on the Sudanese Civil War and its impact on innocent, everyday civilians.  It also gives the audience an advantage, for example, to know that Benson had just crossed the Nile River, a long way from home, while Alepho and his family are still in the village and "went looking for him" because "nobody had seen Benson" (95).  Being able to see the overall effect of chaos and trouble that was brought amongst these people has a greater impact on the reader emotionally, allowing them to have a better sense of the situation.
     The whole book, being basically one big collection of anecdotes, had an immediate impact on me as an outsider to the war because I could not wrap my head around the fact it was true.  The life that is described in Sudan by these boys who were around the same age as me is so contrastingly different that it causes me to question the reality of the stories.  I think that we, being human, can become so involved in our own lives that it is sometimes hard to remember the diversity of other people's experiences.  To read that they witnessed "'a skulls tree where you can see all types of bones from a lot of people'" (80), and were so hungry as to "pick[ed] up the bones of some fish that had already been eaten by a fisherman" (70) really acts as an eye-opener to me, which I think is the reason the boys shared their stories through the book.  They are not only able to show me what it was once like to live in their part of the world, but they also made me think about how I live through our very different experiences.