Hi, can someone please help me to edit and revise this essay I wrote on "The Making and Unmaking of a Child Soldier" by Ishmael Beah?

1. Basically, I need some more evidence and a lot more analysis to support my thesis / main idea to make the essay flow better.

3. The conclusion paragraph is incomplete, so if you could help me design a better one, that would be great.

4. Revise the thesis statement a little (which I put in bold letters) to give it more depth

5. Make sure each topic sentence per paragraph has clear ideas

6. Lastly, if you could possibly add more or better quotes from the book, that would be great.

The entire essay is provided below. Thanks!!

In the story "The Making and Unmaking of a Child Soldier," Ishmael Beah describes his experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone and the immense guilt and suffering it brought upon him. At a young age, Beah has no other choice than to shoot and kill people as he was ordered to, in fear of losing his own life. He explains the amount of guilt and suffering he had to endure as being a survivor of war. In Ishmael Beah's "The Making and Unmaking of a Child Soldier," the author shows how he slowly comes to terms with his overwhelming guilt of being a survivor of war.

When Ishmael was only a kid, he was forced to murder others in order to survive the civil war. Beah states in his story "The Making and Unmaking of a Child Soldier," "In early 1993 when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life" (Beah). He first started to feel guilty and hopeless because he could not save his family from being killed, as he was the only member of the family to make it through the ordeal alive. "After I discovered that my parents and two brothers had been killed, I felt even more lost and worthless" (Beah, 253). Later on in the book, he is forced to pick up a gun and shoot their rebel enemies. Beah explains how after killing one person, he just started shooting anything and anyone that had moved as he was ordered to. After the first man he had killed, his feelings and emotions left him, and "Killing had become as easy as drinking water" (Beah, 257). Although the killing was easy, Beah's feelings of guilt began to increase, because he was ashamed that he was still alive while so many others were dying because of him.

Once the war had ended, Beah was shadowed by an overwhelming guilt of being a survivor of war. He knew that the killings weren't his fault and that he was only doing as he was ordered, to spare his own life. "I hated the 'It is not your fault line that all the staff members said every time anyone spoke about the war" (Beah, 263). Throughout the story, he used many techniques to show his progress in overcoming his guilt. One technique that he used was explaining through flashbacks, all the crimes that he witnessed and was forced to do, how traumatic they are and how they affected him. At first, he never wanted to talk about his experiences, but later in the story, he uses another technique, conversation, to talk about his time in Sierra Leone as a coping mechanism. One person whom Beah relied on heavily was a nurse named Esther. "I began to tell her my dream. At first she just listened to me, and then gradually she started asking questions to make me talk about the lives I had lived before and during the war" (Beah, 264). Another technique that seemed to help Beah overcome his guilt was talking about his feelings and trauma brought on by the war.

In the story "The Making and Unmaking of a Child Soldier," Beah is forced at a young age to fight in a civil war to protect his own life. He first starts feeling guilty when he learns that his parents were murdered and that there was nothing he could do to help them. Later on in the book, he is forced to pick up a gun a shoot