"why have i survived the war? why was i the last person in my immediate family to be alive"? (p. 179). what does ishmael learn by asking these "job"-like questions?

i think beah uses these questions to understand the bigger picture of things. he can see the forces that made him into the person he had become. he was a scared, scared, resilient, and damaged young man. these questions beah understand he was a pawn in a cycle of power and greed that gripped his country. he was a pawn that, at times, did the right things to stay alive. staying alive also meant having immense psychological damage.

explanation:

femininity is conveyed through bernice's personality. she doesn't act how the other girls act and everyone thinks she is weird. she learns how to act in a way that was considered femininely appropriate at the time. she becomes so popular but her attempts to be liked end up backfiring when she is pressured into bobbing her hair. the author wrote that bernice cut off her cousin's hair in revenge for tricking her to cut her hair. this was the authors way of trying to change the way feminine is defined and the way women are expected to act.

the correct answer can either be a or b because it could be both but you should probally choose b