"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:

- "a nonrestrictive clause functions as a modifier to a noun (that is an object, person or concept). these clauses can be described by the following three options: it is set off by comas, it contains a subject and a verbs and it adds nonessential information to the sentence.

for example, in "here is bill gates, who confounded microsoft software company" we can identify "who confounded microsoft software company" as a nonrestrictive clause modifying the noun bill gates. this clause can be describes as a nonrestrictive clause because it is separated by a comma, it adds nonessential information to identify who bill gates is and it must contain both a subject (who) and a verb (confounded)."