Category: A Long Way Gone

War strangles all the hope you have and breaks all the shells of survival to sink in a sea of loss. The book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier” (2007) published by Sarah Crichton Books and written by Ishmael Beah, an author from Sierra Leone. It revolves around Ishmael Beah’s life in Sierra Leone during the war, who struggles to survive in this brutal war. Ishmael Beah, a young village boy who suffers greatly from the war taken in his country. His parents are divorced so he had to live through their separation. In the beginning, the war has not reached his village yet so Beah thought the war wasn’t anything serious. He found himself enjoying a hobby that averted his attention away from the war that was taking place in his country. When the time came where rebels attacked his village, he felt like there was nothing left for him. The reason Ishmael Beah decided to write about the eventful things that happened to him was to let the world see how young kids are taken from their own family environment. They are forced to flee, left to face their fate alone, without identity. These children suffer from deep psychological wounds that appear to be incurable, but appropriate forms of care may have allowed them to overcome them.

Survival is what Ishmael Beah sought for during his childhood years. Reading such novel can help people have a better understanding of children which means providing them with ways to rebuild themselves so that they are no longer passive, or active victims of war, but the makers of their own future. Conflicts of rebels have torn families apart, leaving thousands of children alone to support themselves and their brothers. Children who take part in hostilities not only endanger their lives, but their often indigent and immature behavior also poses danger to those around them.

While Beah goes through horrors of the civil war and suffers greatly from it, at one point he joins the army and suddenly becomes a soldier, holding a gun at his young age, joining in destructing his own country. When this behavior continues it gets imprinted in the children’s minds and it’s all from the lack of maturity that compels them to commit uncalculated acts to the indelible and generally irreversible trauma that lasts within them even if the fight has ended. This issue is very sensitive to Beah’s situation, being drugged and brainwashed to do all those horrible things without feeling any awareness of his ruthless actions. They had told him that the rebels were responsible of killing his parents then anger fueled him and he started imagining how he would capture them all at once, lock them inside a house, sprinkle gas over it and toss a match as he watches them burning while a laugh erupts from his throat. Kids in Beah’s shoes resort to excessive force and shoot for no reason, often not realizing the results of their actions and the suffering they impose on the victim. Beah was being clear about his suffering from the army of Sierra Leone as they had threatened him constantly with death if he runs away or refuses to fight back with them.

The author is very highly qualified in the subject of war because of his first hand experience in the events itself. The author, Beah, doesn’t consider any reader’s background knowledge of war, he just goes straight to the point explaining every detail of the events that he faced everyday, how he struggled to find a place to hide from the rebels and how afraid he felt around that particular time. A moment he had to risk his life was when he went back to the village to get some food and the rebels were still there so him and his friends crawled on the dirty ground to be as hidden as possible from the eyes of the rebels. His use of language while telling us his story is a mix of motion verbs. The running and hiding from the rebels showed how pertified he was, it was a mix of of urgency or hurriedness. He explains a special terminology in his novel very intelligibly. He expresses the terrified looks of fear the village people possessed he came across by. They were frightened whenever they got a glimpse of young boys lurking near their village thinking they were part of the rebels. He would always describe their reactions and behaviors around him.

The evidence he uses to support his book’s central ideas is his own sufferings. He has witnessed the effects of a devastating war that did not seem to end soon. Beah seen everything from people dying, gun shootings and seeing his only brother he had left disappearing too. This proves how convincing he was to everyone reading his novel. He also depends on the reader’s personal opinion, observation and assessment because he is recalling the events that he carries now with him forever so that the reader could be convinced at how he lived through all of this till today. They are helpful to the reader because it makes the reader think and imagine at the same time. There’s no validation existing through his text because it all comes from his memories and there’s no one other than himself the reader can trust.

Ishmael Beah bias was directed to himself, he’s the only one who disapproved and observed the war and the only time he was biased was when he got drugged and brainwashed to think like the soldiers, believing the people standing on his way are his enemies. Beah was very dispassionate in his writings, he had fear in him almost every time he passed one village to another. He did not give any room to sarcastic interpretation of his sufferings. He was very scared what the next day will bring. This type of serious but dispassionate language really helped the Beah’s premise because it makes the reader more interested in his way of thinking. There were a few times where he made assumptions that him and his friends were going to die by the hands of their own people because of some situations he was put in every time someone found out about a group of kids roaming around their village. Everything in the novel itself was personalized opinion since it’s all coming from one person, Beah himself.

Ultimately, the Ishmael Beah had to grasp back the reality after getting removed from the army. He was put in a rehabilitation center by the UNICEF because of how crazy he went about killing and that he was only young soldier. He did not care who he killed or stabbed, he was basically a killing machine. The implications of the future that awaits him were the nightmares because he would still jolt up awake at night after having a dream of him standing there and killing without mercy. Although there was a positivity of getting away from the war, the negativity stayed because the memories of this horrible war and the people he lost will forever leave a big scar in his memories till this very day.

I believe the reader might gain from reading this book is Ishmael Beah’s childhood life of how far war and other violence violate the fundamental rights of the child and hinder early childhood development. Learn how this kind of bloody events can have catastrophic effects, resulting in a range of psychological symptoms in people who have lived and tasted the bitterness of war. It’s disturbing to see that time does not cure trauma, so children should be helped to express their suffering and face bad memories by providing the necessary support and guidance. When Ishmael was worried how he’s going to cope about living with a family. He did not know how he would do when his nightmares and migraines would hit him. This stuck me because I have been a victim of war, I was only 10 when my country went protesting against the president and everyday I would hear gunshots the whole night. Sometimes I would have nightmares that the shootings had struck our house but thankfully nothing happened. I somewhat understand how Ishmael felt while going through this. A difficult issue he had to overcome is being alone during the war because the separation from parents is one of the most serious shocks that war can cause, especially for young children, because it is often more painful than the war itself.

In recent times, the stories of civil wars and ethnic conflicts in Africa have shocked the world. In particular, children felt the blunt side of the war as the conflicts have led to separation from their parents. The book, A Long Way Gone; Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah gives the reader insight into the effect and nature of the terrifying civil war in Sierra Leone. The author tells of his first-hand experiences as a child soldier in the late 20th century. The civil war displaces Beah, and soon after, he is coerced into becoming a child soldier. Luck is on his side as he is liberated from the conflict and gets a chance to live a normal life after the ordeal. The essay analyses the role of cultural globalization in Ishmael Beah’s life as he rapidly transitions from a ‘boy’ to a ‘man’ in the ‌‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‍‌‌‍‌‌‌‌‌​context of the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s. By extension, the essay will weigh whether the cross-border movement of culture oppressive, liberating or​‌‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‍‌‌‍‌ both in Beah’s case.

Cultural globalization has played a crucial role in eroding cultures in both developed and developing countries. Globalization has allowed the sharing of information and ways of doing things. In Beah’s book, he describes how he was fascinated with the American music genre-hip hop and rap when he was 12 years old. In this case, the author describes how vital hip hop and rap music was for his survival after his village was attacked by rebel forces forcing him to separate with his parents and eventually ending up serving as a child soldier in Sierra Leone’s army. When he was eight years old, Beah and his friends formed their own rap group as he narrates in the following quote. According to the Beah, ‘some boys who taught him more about foreign music and dance. During holidays, he brought me cassettes and taught my friends and me how to dance to what we came to know as hip-hop. I loved the dance and particularly enjoyed learning the lyrics because they were poetic, and it improved my vocabulary’ (p.12). Beah got obsessed with the kind of English that the black fellows were using on television. This ended up keeping him alive on different occasions.

On one occasion, Beah and his group were performing in a talent search competition held in another village when his village was attacked and destroyed. This saved his life as the author narrates that they kept listening to rap music while awaiting the tragic news about his village attack. ‘Junior, Talloi, and I listened to rap music, trying to memorize the lyrics so that we could avoid thinking about the situation at hand. Naughty by Nature, LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., and Heavy D & The Boyz; we had left home with only these cassettes and the clothes that we wore’ (Beah 39). This shows that the foreign culture adopted from the rap music they listened to and practiced helped him in both good times and tough times, as shown in the quote above. These were tight spots during the civil war, and Beah chose to remain positive by embracing foreign music and learn more from this culture.

Furthermore, international media systems are viewed as forms of cultural imperialism in foreign countries. The dominance of western countries such as the U.S. has dominated other countries through the exports of films, television, advertising messages, and radio channels. Media influence has a vital role in influencing social change, mainly through the internet. The cross-border movement of culture has positive legal effects on stability and peace in many countries. For example, people are adopting western culture due to the appealing nature. ‘Now, this is good English, the kind that you should be listening to,’ he shouted from the yard.

While Father listened to the news, Junior taught us how to move our feet to the beat’ (p.13).

In other words, cultural globalization in Ishmael Beah’s life rapidly transitions him from a ‘boy’ to a ‘man.’ This is in the context of the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s. By extension, the cross border spread of the culture of helping those in need is a light at the end of the tunnel for Beah. The global culture liberates the child solider, Beah, from a deeply divided country that is in chaos due to the civil war of 1993.

In the same manner, cultural globalization has improved social participation and made interactions more flexible. As cross border spread of culture continues to increase, increased virtual communication has allowed people to share knowledge and develop innovative ways of solving social and personal issues. Beah’s book describes the rehabilitation of a child soldier who had learned to kill as a means of survival in his own country. The author states that ‘a change of environment would not immediately make us normal boys; we were dangerous and brainwashed to kill. They had just started this process of rehabilitation’ (Beah, 83). The change of environment in Freetown helps in the recovery process. Experts developed the rehabilitation process across the workers’ platform. They also helped them in terms of healthy growth and transformation in the process, making them productive members of society.

When Beah is admitted to rehab at the age of 15, rap music helped him a lot in the recovery process. They develop a bond with Esther, a nurse, at the facility who gives him music cassettes and a Walkman to listen to rap music. The author describes, ‘She threw a package at me. I held it in my hand, wondering what it was and why she had gotten it for me. She was looking at me, waiting for me to open it. When I unwrapped it, I jumped up and hugged her, but immediately held back my happiness. I sternly asked, ‘Why did you get me this Walkman and cassette if we are not friends? And how did you know that I like rap music?’ (Beah 331). This shows how much Beah loved rap music and how the cross-border culture facilitated in his liberation and recovery process. In this case, Beah and Esther bonded strongly, ending up calling each other brother and sister.

The way that Beah felt towards hip hop and rap played a fundamental role in terms of liberating him from the atrocities of the Sierra Leone civil war and his recovery process. The hip hop and rap culture spread to Sierra Leone, becoming a ‘happy place’ for Beah, who can transition rapidly from a boy to a man ready to recreate a good life. Cultural globalization helped Ismael to become stronger and overcome the war’s struggles by surviving and getting into rehab, which eventually caused him to emerge victoriously. The author later went to the U.S. to experience this culture as he continues with his studies.

Therefore, it is imperative to reiterate the fact that the cross-border movement of culture was not oppressive in Beah’s case. Instead, it came as a liberating force that enlightened and saved him from the social quagmire that made Beah and the rest of child soldiers the perpetrators of heinous crimes against humanity during the civil war. Similarly, cultural globalization plays a fundamental role in transitioning him from a ‘boy’ to a ‘man’ who wants to learn and know more about the rest of the world away from war-torn Sierra Leone. The impact of cultural globalization on influencing trends and international participation is clearly illustrated in Ishmael Beah’s memoirs. The story of horror and terror gives the reader a peek at the nature and effect of the Sierra Leone civil war that started in 1993. Collective effort and legal action allow the author to get help and escape the war-torn country into the United States. Cultural globalization gives room for the liberation of Ishmael from his 3-year struggle for survival through the efforts of experts across the globe. Hip hop and rap music were at the center of this liberation process.

Work Cited

1. Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier. Sarah Crichton Books, 2007.

Background

Before I read this book I knew that is was about a twelve-year-old boy who became a soldier boy with his friends while his village was being attacked. I chose this book because I’ve always had an interest in children’s experiences during warfare. A child’s life during warfare is more interesting to me because children aren’t as exposed to warfare as adults or teens are.

Content Summary and Writer’s Purpose

One day a boy named Ishmael Beah, his brother, and friends come home from their rap performance to find a civil war. The boys are not able to find their families so they have to commit acts of crime to survive on their own. Ishmael ends up becoming a soldier boy. He and other soldier boys end up getting addicted to illegal substances. Ishmael ends forgetting his life and going into rehab. He goes to New York to tell his story and meet other people like him. After going back to Sierra Leone he realizes the danger he is in and immigrated to the United States. I think this story is meant to bring awareness to children going through the same situation. He describes the trouble he went through during this time in his life. This story shows how disagreement or a civil war can ruin someone’s mental health. He almost becomes a human vegetable because he was forced to involve himself in a war. Being forced to work as a child soldier caused him to be exposed to things such as drugs, which is not healthy for a child his age.

The most important character in this text is Ishmael Beah because the story revolves around his hectic life. Khalilou is an important character because him and his family protected Ishmael in their home for a short period of time. Esther is an important character because she was the first person to help him realize what had happened. Esther continuously pushed Ishmael’s recovery and she helped him immensely.

Esther starts off by meeting Ishmael as he is injured. She starts off as a very friendly and helpful person. She immediately asks Ishmael to be friends right when she meets him. She starts to regret what she says after Ishmael almost declares that he would be a bad friend. “My name is Esther we should be friends.” “Are you sure you wanna be friends with me?” I asked. She thought for a while and said, “maybe not.” Esther is very loving and selfless, always caring for Ishmael while he was recovering. Esther is also quite blunt, almost agreeing that she should think about being friends with Ishmael.

Evaluation

This book was quite interesting to me because it was real. The book clearly explains and intensifies everything that happened by adding more unique adjectives. This book has some intense topics, such as abusing drugs at an illegal age, but it really brings out the truth of our world. This book puts a great image of the book in your head, clearly describing key points. Every large scale moment in the book was described clearly enough so that I could see in my head what was happening.

Ishmael Beah’s book A Long Way Gone tells a horrific story of how of Beah was impacted by violence. Beah grows up in a violent setting and his exposure to violence has an impact on his beliefs and emotions. The impact of being exposed to violence at such a young age causes damage to Beah’s mental and emotional well-being. Specifically, exposure to violence takes away Beah own sense of innocence, gives him feelings of hopelessness and insecurity, and causes him much guilt.

Beah’s horrific experience with war and violence leads to a loss of childlike innocence. In the beginning of the book Beach hears only rumors of a war. Beah states, “There were all kinds of stories told about the war that made it sound as if it was happening in a faraway and different land” (Beah 5). Before war reaches Beah, he is still innocent like a child. He enjoys dance and hip-hop music. He even formed a hip-hop band at age 8. We see how child-like Beah is before he is sucked into the war when he writes about his love of dance, “…he brought me cassettes and taught my friends and me how to dance to what we came to know as hip- hop. I loved the dance, and particularly enjoyed learning the lyrics, because they were poetic; and it improved my vocabulary (Beah 6). Beah’s innocence is shown by his love of hip-hop dance and music. However, the violence does reaches Beah and his innocence is lost. He is only 12 years old when he is forced to become a child soldier. We see evidence that Beah losses his innocence after he becomes a solider, “My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed” (Beah 116). Beah is a soldier now and his views are now to kill someone or else he will be killed. He no longer sees the world as a child but instead he is filled with feeling of vengeance. The rebels he is fighting are responsible for killing his family and he now wants revenge for their deaths. “I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive…” (Beah 199). Beah’s innocence is further lost when he actually kills the rebels who killed his family and Beah discovers that he does not feel any better after avenging his family’s deaths. By being forced into fighting war as a child, Beah has his childhood and innocence taken from him, “Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters. There was nothing we could do about it. Sometimes we ran after people shouting that we were not what they thought, but this made them more scared” (Beah 55). This quote shows that not only has Beah lost his innocence, but other people see it too. They do not see him as a child but rather as a dangerous solider that they are afraid to be near. All the violence had taken away Beah’s his sense of innocence.

Beah’s experience as a child solider created feelings of being insecure, unsafe and hopelessness. The violence of war caused Beah to witness his village being destroyed. He luckily escaped but he soon realizes that he needs to leave his village, “We decided to leave the village the next day and go somewhere safe, somewhere far away from where we were. We had no idea where we would go or even how to get to a safe place, but we were determined to find one” (Beah 36). The quote demonstrates that Beah feels insecure staying near his home. The war that he thought was far away has now taken over his village and feels unsafe and insecure. Later Beah begins to loss hope and he is looking for some type of inspiration to maintain his hope. He is feeling lonely when he remembers the words of his father in writing, “When I was very little, my father used to say, “If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die” (Beah 54). The fact that Beah has to remember the words of his father’s optimism shows that Beah himself is starting to lose hope. Beah’s struggle with hope all throughout the book and we see numerous times where Beah does something to help give himself hope. His life was so traumatic that he seeks to be ‘normal things’ in the hopes of feeling more ‘normal’. Beah states, “Even though our journey was difficult, every once in a while, we were able to do something that was normal and made us happy for a brief moment (Beah 70). Beah’s live is mostly dominated by the need to just survive. He struggles with hunger and despair. To combat his feelings of hopelessness, Beah tries to do ‘normal’ things so he can feel some type of happiness. It is one ways Beah survives his circumstances is by finding was to regain hope and optimism. However, Beah finds himself homeless and without any parents. He wants to believe things will improve but his circumstances create feelings of despair and hopelessness. Beah exclaims, “One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I was not sure when or where it was going to end” (Beah 69). Beah hopelessness is because he is roaming the country wanting to escape the war and does not understand everything that is happening to him. The combination of these events and circumstances leaves Beah, who expresses optimism many times throughout the book, to also express feelings of insecurity, despair and lost hope.

Serving as a child solider forces Beah to do things he would have never done otherwise. In the beginning of the book Beah is an optimistic child. However, his optimism is quickly challenged once he is fighting in the war and is forced to kill others. This causes him great feelings of guilt. Beah as a child was forced to fight in a war what he had to do to survive should not be held against him but he finds himself feeling guilty about it. Later Beah goes to a rehabilitation center where they try to help Beah with is guilt. Esther, a nurse tells him, “None of what happened was your fault. You were just a little boy, and anytime you want to tell me anything, I am here to listen” (Beah 160). Esther tries to comfort Beah by telling him his violent actions were not his fault but he us unwilling to accept that. Beah was manipulated into having feelings of joy whenever he fights or killed someone and he feels very guilty about it. His guilt results in him having migraine headaches and trying use drugs to make him feel less guilty. Later, when Beah and other child soldiers are at a rehabilitation center and the staff consistently tells the boys that what they did was not their fault. They tell the boys,” This isn’t your fault, you know. It really isn’t. You’ll get through this” (Beah 151). However, these assurances do not comfort Beah. In one way he feels right for killing the rebels that killed his family but then his guilt over these feelings overtake him. It is almost like Beah’s experience with war made it difficult to recall anything that happened to him before the war. “I would desperately try to think about my childhood but I couldn’t. The war memories had formed a barrier that I had to break in order to think about any moment in my life before the war” (Beah 149). Beah spends the reminder of his life trying to make sense and meaning of what happened to him. He struggles with guilt and regret through much of it.

Ishmael Beah lived a traumatic life. Being forced to serve as a child solider in Sierra Leone during a civil war exposed him to gruesome violence, robbed him of his childhood and gave him feelings of guilt and hopelessness. As a pre-teen he encounters murder, death and suffering. This violence has a dramatic impact on his mental and emotional well-being. However, I am impressed that he survived his circumstances and he is using his experiences to help others. I believe that the fact the Beah was able to be resilient and share his story shows that he is a hero and not a victim.

Comparing the themes in A Long Way Gone and Five Chimneys Situations that have happened in your lifetime do not define who you are or what your future is like. It doesn’t matter how challenging the circumstances were for both of them, Ishmael Beah and Olga Lengyel still carried on with both of their lives. These two stories deal with being put in the most unthinkable situations possible and still being able to find the strength to push forward. In Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone he learns that in order to survive, he must overthrow his feelings and literally fight with everything has has. In a same way, in Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys, she takes it very slow and one day at a time living in the most harsh and terrible living conditions at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Throughout A Long Way Gone and Five Chimneys “fear can be all-consuming,” “never lose hope,” and “accepting your past despite what has happened” are themes depicted in each of the books.

The theme “fear can be all consuming” is illustrated in both memoirs. In A Long Way Gone and Five Chimneys, Beah and Lengyel are in situations where they let the fear of them dying take fulldrive of their actions, but eventually find the strength to stay driven. In A Long Way Gone Beah is living with the interminable fear of dying for the sole reason that his life is constantly in danger. “Our innocence had been replaced by fear, and we had become monsters” (Beah 55). Beah tries to characterize through this quote that he and the boys became so afraid that they were all with fear and would do whatever it took to survive. In the same way that Beah let fear control his actions, Lengyel also struggled to not let that same fear affect her actions. In Five Chimneys all of the prisoners in the camp were put in a line to have their hair shaved off right after they arrived. The guards decided to pull Lengyel out of the line. “I was fearful. Why should I have been the only one whose hair was not cut? So I disregarded the order and got back in line” (Lengyel 28,29). Lengyel let the fear of not knowing why she was the only one taken out of line control her actions to the point where she forced herself to get back into the line. Under these circumstances, Beah and Lengyel chose to let the trepidation of the situations af,.klfect their actions, and even through all of their hardships, they found the strength to keep going.

The theme “not losing hope” corresponds with both these books because a person needs to have so much optimism to survive what Beah and Lengyel experienced. Beah found the memories of his father comforting during his ordeal. Some of the things his father said to him stuck with him his whole life. Those words motivated and inspired him to fight his hardest and have belligerence at the time that it was most needed. “When I was very little my father used to say, ‘If you are alive there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive” (Beah 54). Without that advice from his father, Beah may never have found the will to keep fighting and continue to have hope that he was still alive for a reason. Not only did Beah have to hold onto the little bit of hope he had left, but Lengyel also had to find optimism and resilience in every situation she was put in. “I have not entirely lost my faith in mankind. Even if in the jungle of Birkenau, all were not necessarily inhuman to their fellow men, then there is hope indeed. It is hope that keeps me alive” (Lengyel 229). If Lengyel did not hold onto hope, she may never have survived. For this reason, the little bit of hope she had left, invigorated her to use whatever strength she had to fight for her life. In the hope that they would both live, Beah and Lengyel had continued to persevere even in their weakest moments.

Another theme present in these books is “accepting your past despite what has happened.” Beah and Lengyel, struggling to survive their journeys, find the courage to move on from everything that they endured. In A Long Way Gone, Beah begins to tell people that Muhamed, his best friend before the war, is his brother because he does not want to keep explaining everything he went through. He wanted to move on from the things that happened and start over. “I knew I could never forget my past, but I wanted to stop talking about it so I would be fully present in my new life” (Beah 202). Beah had such a long journey, filled with so much peril and anguish, that it was hard to accept it and move forward. Not only did Beah go through a lot, Lengyel had to live through the death of her parents, children, and husband. She had to live without any of her loved ones and had to survive the hardships of living in a concentration camp. “The world understands that I could not have known, but in my heart a terrible feeling persists that I could have, might have been able to save them” (Lengyel 11). By the end of her memoir, Lengyel not only feels responsible for numerous deaths throughout the book, but she also struggles to accept those deaths and move on. With everything that has happened, Beah at this point in his journey just wants to move on and have a fresh start and Lengyel feels as if she is responsible and that she could have done something more to change what happened; But the reality of it is that there was not anything more she could have done.

These three themes were prominent throughout these books in so many ways. Ishmael Beah and Olga Lengyel were put in unthinkable situations, but somewhere in the darkness of those circumstances found courage and strength to guide them into the light. Do not let your past define your future.

The memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah and A Bite of a Mango by Mariatu Kamara is set in the tragic Sierra Leone war of the early 1990s. Ishmael and Mariatu, respectively, share a tragic experience of terror that is still with them, and we’re thankful to seek and meet others to rely on throughout the war.

Beah’s story is one that explains all aspects of war to show the world. He tells the views about both an escaping civilian and a fighting soldier of the war. Beah describes his and his friends’ thoughts when running away from the war and his thoughts after he is to be reinstated into society. He portrays the anxiety and the fear in these situations vividly. Beah faced the terror a second time even after being rehabilitated, which could have possibly dragged him back into the war (Beah 209). Beah was scared when he first meets UNICEF, as he was confused about why people were trying to help soldiers who killed millions of innocents. Till this day Ishmael conflicts and battles with the tragic scars left in his memory.

Kamara’s story does give the reader a look of what it is like to be a part of this conflict. Through her inner thoughts, Kamara describes the feeling of always being on the run from the rebels. She had first met the rebels when they set her home on fire, losing most of her family, and when they cut off her hands. As Kamara was travelling to the main city, Port Loko, to receive care for her hands , she said: ‘In my imagination I saw rebels camouflaged in their khaki pants, sneaking through the bushes beside me’ (Kamara 52). Kamara is someone who represents the others who have had to suffer a similar fate in war. It is still, however, Kamara’s individual experience that she tells about. The Bite of the Mango contains many thoughts and feelings that belong to Kamara alone such as her thoughts about how to handle eating a mango without the help of others (Kamara 48). This shows how sad the children had it in the war as they had no one to rely on or to get help from.

The story does not only belong to him but also the people he meets because of this war. He describes the lives of his friends, how they lost their family, and how they end up after the war. Also, in A Long Way Gone, the army and the rebels are illustrated as torturing and merciless. As a former child soldier himself, Beah depicts the worries of the child soldiers after they are rehabilitated and eventually reinstated. Beah runs through all his internal questions and feelings when he was to live with his uncle after his rehabilitation: I was worried about living with a family. I had been on my own for years and had taken care of myself without any guidance from anyone. I was afraid that I might look ungrateful to my uncle, who didn’t have to take me in if I distanced myself from the family unit. I was worried about what to do when my nightmares and migraines took hold of me. How was I going to explain my sadness, which I am unable to hide as it takes over my face, to my new family, especially the children? (Beah 179). All of his thoughts are fears are of a former child soldier that will be reinstated into society. Ishmael is worried about living with the family he seeks out to others to help him portray life in the United State.

Mariatu was not the only one to seek help from others, as she meets people along the way who helped her with navigation, food and water, shelter and later on finding a safe home in Canada where she would stay with her new adoptive family. As Mariatu is brought in to the hospital a few weeks later news is brought up to her from the nurse. ‘This man Bill would like to help you, his family read your story and they would like to give you food and clothes’ (Kamara 134). Even though Mariatu fought resiliently throughout her story, without the help of other people and resource she wouldn’t be where she is today. Mariatu was able to influence others with disability’s as she strives to tell her story to about the will to keep fighting

In conclusion, Ishmael Beah’s book has opened the eyes of the people in this world, because his life story from this book reveals a variety of scenarios and thoughts that happened in Sierra Leone’s war. Both authors were able to spread their stories to the world when they travelled overseas. Beah describes fighting in the war and running from the war, while Kamara describes being a maimed civilian running from war. Kamara’s story is mostly of her own life and how she survived the war, which does inform the world about how the war is to a young child and the importance of morals.

In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah gives the readers a different perspective on the experience of child soldiers through imagery, personnification and flashbacks. A Long Way Gone is an autobiography by this author, Ishmael Beah who was he himself, a child soldier. In his book he tells the reader in exact detail the story of his life back in Sierra Leone at the time of the war as a child soldier, the pain and horrific tragedies that he had to endure at a very young age. This story also tells the reader about the connections he made with other people, but that were then broken or taken apart by the war.

Imagery

By putting the reader in his shoes and describing every scene of his childhood to the reader through extremely strong imagery. Ishmael Beah describes some extremely gruesome scenes to grasps the reader’s attention and make the reader understand the horrific tragedies he had to endure.

He also describes the atmosphere in detail to put the reader in his place and feel his pain. Ismeal does not try to justify his actions and crimes by brushing off the subject, rather he acknowledges it and explains that it was only his defense mechanism to stay alive.

Ishmael Beah uses imagery throughout the book, to keep the image of his life in the reader’s mind. In one of the passages Ishmael is in New York and is dreaming about his past life in Sierra Leone, where he is a soldier and he is pushing a wheelbarrow across a deserted village to bring it to the cemetery and once he gets there he unveils this person under the white sheet and realises that it was him. “I AM PUSHING a rusty wheelbarrow in a town where the air smells of blood and burnt flesh.” this is one of the evidences of imagery that Ishmael Beah has used to bring us to his position and smell what he smells to actually feel and sense. He mainly writes about the smells when he is surrounded by dead bodies because that was what he remembered the clearest because it was the biggest part of his life. There is another quote that shows a slight different imagery technique. In another of Ismael’s passages he is walking with the other boys in a deserted village looking for food, suddenly a crow falls from the sky. The boys are tormented between eating the crow to stay alive or continue searching. At the end some boys decide to eat the crow. One of the boys called Kanei is whistling, once he stops Ishmael describes how it became eerily silent afterwards. “After Kanei stopped humming, the world became eerily silent. The breeze and the clouds had stopped moving, the trees were still, as if they all awaited something unimaginable.”p81

This passage explains how sometimes through his journey he would feel like the world slowed down or even stopped. These feelings happened because the only thing that Ishmael wanted was a way out, a way to start a new life or go back to his old one with his family, friends and his home. The only way for him to get out was through his thoughts. He could also escape through slowing the time down and taking a break from reality, the reality that he was in the middle of a war.

Personnification

Ishmael Beah uses a lot of personification throughout his story, this factor really brings the book to life. It adds depth to his story and sometimes helps the reader understand his tone better. Most personification in this book is of nature because that is one of the only things he is able to attach himself to, being this you boy alone. The nature in this book also brings back memories from his past like while playing with his friends or sometimes it would bring back stories that his grandmother would tell him when he was younger. Such as when he was running away from Kamator and loses his older brother Junior, he describes wanting to be in his families arms and that night night he finds a place to sleep in a tree “in the arms of those trees, between earth and sky.” He frequently refers to the moon and talks about how it relates to his life, this goes on throughout the novel. For instance early on in the book Ishmael Beah’s keeps hearing the wise man from the village say, ‘We must strive to be like the moon.’ An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often to people who walked past his house on their way to the river to fetch water, to hunt, to tap palm wine; and to their farms. I remember asking my grandmother what the old man meant. She explained that the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. She said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But she said, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon.

The sun is also one big part of nature that Ishmael Beah keeps referring to because it is what slows them done a lot because of the heat, it also is what creates shadows that leads Ismael the character back to some many different scenarios in his past present or even futur. At one point in the book when the boys are being led into battle for the first time Ishmael Beah recalls “the sun’s brightness painted our shadows on the ground”. Ishmael Beah gives us an understanding that the moon followed him through his journey and was always there for him even when other family members were gone. During times when horrible things were happening he would say that “ The moon hid behind clouds to avoid seeing what was happening. The moon disappeared and took the stars with it, making the sky weep”. This is also an evidence of personification, he is implying that he felt as if he was connecting with the moon and the moon was connecting with him, this is why the moon would ‘hide away’ to be able to avoid seeing Ishmael (the character) do these horrid actions.

Flashbacks

This is a very important literary device that Ishmael Beah uses throughout his book because it informs the reader about his life in the past. Most flashbacks occur because Ishmael (the character) sees something that reminds him of his home, for example when he was taken from the army by UNICEF soldiers and taken to the rehabilitation center. There it was very hard for the boys to recover because of all the drugs they had taken and the traumatic events they had endured. One night Ishmael was sitting on the verandah thinking of his life before the war had touched him,”That night, as I sat on the verandah listening to some of the boys discuss the volleyball game I had missed, I tried to think about my childhood days, but it was impossible, as I began getting flashbacks of the first time I slit a man’s throat.” p.160

Ishmael Beah tells us about these flashbacks to remind the reader how it is very hard to forget his old life, this affects him mentally and physically. Ishmael starts lashing out because he wants to go back to the frontline with his new ‘family’.

In one passage Ishmael just arrives from a secondary school and sees one of his former friends, Mohammed, sitting on a stoop he then walks over,We sat together on the stoop and briefly talked about our childhood pranks. ‘Sometimes I think about those great times we had dancing at talent shows, practicing new dances, playing soccer until we couldn’t see the ball… It seems like all those things happened a very long time ago. It is really strange, you know,’ he said, looking away for a bit.

‘I know, I know…’ I said.

‘You were a troublesome boy,’ he reminded me.

‘I know, I know…’p.170

This is another passage in the book where Ishmael is trying to remember the happy moments he had before the war, he now has help remembering since he found his friend, they are able to think about the fun pranks they used to pull. This is also a moment where you realise that Ishmael is really turning back to his innocent self because when he sees his friend they do not start talking about being soldiers but directly remind each other of the happy times they had, this is an evidence that they miss their old life back in Mattru Jong more than their time associated with the war.

 Fear is something that can trigger frustration, which can lead up to hopelessness because of its feeling of being lost within one’s self. Fear is something that remains constant in this memoir. In A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Bech, one can see that fear causes frustration and eventually to hopelessness.

Like most people, Ishmael fears life and death, as neither is pleasant. During the beginning of his memoir, Ishmael is becoming isolated from all that he knows. He loses contact with his brother, his friends and everyone from his present and past life. Living in a life of wondering if you were going to live or not, Ishmael starts to become frustrated with living and hiding in fear. Ishmael expresses, “I become frustrated with living in fear. I felt as if I was always waiting for death to come to me, so I decided to go somewhere where there was at least some peace”( Page 45). Ishmael begins to struggle between the demands of his body and the troubles in his mind. Ishmael decides to pick further isolation by leaving, but he somehow finds the strength to keep going and survive.

Ishmael’s journey to life carries on in a state of mind of hopelessness. He worries that each time he faces death, a part of him wants to accept his death. Ishmael states, “Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death. Even though I am still alive. I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies”(Page 70). Ishmael starts to treasure the few moments of joy he has with his friends. To take away his mindset of not wanting to thrive and survive in order to meet his family once again.

Ishmael now returns to his Uncle’s home in Freetown to being the school year.

Most of the students in his class know that he use to be a boy soldier and they fear that he will snap and hurt them at any time, so they sit far away and refuse to speak to him and Mohamed who was also a boy soldier. On May 25, 1997, violence beings to happen in the capital. Ishmael wakes up to gunfire and fears the return of civil war. Later in that night rebels and soldiers on the front lines started pouring into the state. Ishmael writes, “The entire nation crumbled into a state of lawlessness…I couldn’t return to my previous life. I didn’t think I could make it out alive this time” (203). Ishmael has escaped the war only to have the war find him again. Ishmael fears of becoming a soldier again, but yet, he is more afraid of dying. He now realizes that life is something valuable and he was to survive through this.

In the memoir, A long way gone by Ishmael Bech one can see that fear causes frustration and eventually to hopelessness. But one can also see fear can turn in to something to live through in order to have hope for life. Ishmael starts to realize that he isn’t by himself in his suffering and that he has people that will help him get through the hardships. He also learned if amazing children from around the world can live, and survive their hardships, and learn to thrive in the world, he can too.   

In the memoir, A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, He shares his experiences that we can learn more about and understand and he guides us through his daily life. For Beah, his childhood is not very pleasant and he encountered the horrors of war, loss of innocence, and how humans can change given the circumstances they endure.

Throughout the novel, Beah experiences loss of innocence through many conflicts and the violence of war. Beah’s innocence was taken away from him by wars and gave him a lust for killing. A quote that symbolizes that is ‘my heart was beating faster than it ever had. Each gunshot seemed to cling to the beat of my heart (Page 23).’ The violence and terror are presented through the eyes of Beah as that he feels guilty for the many innocent people he killed which makes him lose his childhood innocence. This connection of this quote to the theme is that Ishmael has not yet been exposed to the horrors and the violence of war until the rebels attack his village of Mattru Jong. He begins to experience the horrors of the war firsthand by hearing the sounds of the gunshots and the screams of the terrified villagers. This shows the readers that he has lost his innocence and sense of humanity by experiencing the violence of the wars he experienced, which changes him later in the novel. Beah loses his innocence through the quote ‘every time I stopped to change magazines and saw my two lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people (Page 119).’ The connection to the theme of loss of innocence is that the last strip of innocence left in him comes in his first kill as a young soldier. Fear and revenge were kept in Ishmael Beah’s mind when he made his first kill in the swamp, fear and revenge were emitted from his mind with every pull of the trigger. This quote makes the reader know that he is no longer the inexperienced child he was before and that even he feels the change in his character.

At the beginning of the novel Beah has a happy childhood but it all changes after getting separated from his family and experiences the horrors of war. War can change someone catastrophically. Beah was not alone since numerous young adults from Sierra Leone became entangled in the war and had to kill many innocent people in unquestionable ways. This is portrayed from the quote ‘This is one of the consequences of the civil war, people stop trusting each other, and every stranger becomes an enemy (Page 37).’ This reveals to Beah how relationships between many people with others became corrupted as a result of conflicts. That experience changed him on various levels by killing innocent people even though he feels guilty about what he has done. He listens to rap music with his friends to forget about his surroundings and untouched by the horrors of war. The horrors of war for Beah began from his childhood when rebels attacked and invaded Sierra Leone killing many people in the village as well as his family. After his family’s deaths, Beah’s only thoughts were to kill or to be killed. This is shown from the quote while escaping from the rebels they found: ‘jumping over fresh dead bodies’ and ‘remains and blood sprinkle like rain (Chapter 3).’ This shows the reader that he no longer had a home or family to go back to and that his childhood was stolen from him.

One another important and common theme in A Long Way Gone is human nature. In the novel, Ishmael Beah develops a powerful connection with nature. He discovers that humans change given their circumstances eventhough sometimes they want to help nature. As he spends more time in wars and conflicts, Ishmael loses his link with nature. A quote that shows that he has changed: when I was a child, my grandmother told me that the sky speaks to those who look and listen to it. She said, ‘in the sky, there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy, and confusion (Chapter 17).’ That night I wanted the sky to talk to me. The connection to the theme is that Beah makes this statement in Chapter 17, after showing the readers how he is fascinated by the appearance of the moon at the beginning of the novel and the wonders of nature. This again represents nature and this shows the readers that the natural world is greater than the world of conflict and human violence. This also links to the theme of memory in the novel because Beah recovers his sense of family history. He remembers the memory of his grandmother and her lesson about man’s communication with the natural world. This shows the reader that Beah remembers this connection with the natural world and wants to make himself whole and recover his connection with nature again. His loss of the connection between him and nature changed him and made him survive the hard way so this quote links to the theme of survival. This is portrayed from the quote ‘That night we were so hungry that we stole people’s food while they slept (Page 4).’ This quote connects to the theme because normally they wouldn’t be stealing people’s food. Due to their circumstances, they need to survive. There is another quote that shows survival and how humans change due to circumstances. This is shown from the quote “In the swamp, we ran past people who were stuck in the mud, past handicapped people who couldn’t be helped, for anyone who stopped to do so was risking his own life (Page 24).” This connects to the theme of “Human Nature,” because people are abandoning the villagers who are stuck or too weak to save themselves. In normal circumstances, they might have helped them, but to save their own lives they chose not to.

In conclusion, many themes are represented and should be taken into account. My audience should be able to understand these themes and apply them to daily life. I just want to claim that we should learn from Beah’s experience and try not to do the same things he did.