I. INTRODUCTION
A Long Way Gone is a memoir written by Ishmael Beah. Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone on November 23, 1980. His book “a long way gone: Memoirs of a boy solider” was written in 2007 and tells of his life as a child solider in the Sierra Leone civil war. It was the only book he has ever written and received very mixed reviews and criticism. The elements will be read are Setting, Conflicts, Characters, Setting, Purpose, Relevant Quotations, and Point of View of the book.
II. PLOT
A memoir of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, will take people on a journey through suffering and survival, an endless struggle against the seemingly impossible, a miraculous delivery.
In telling his story, Beah challenges the West’s glorified view of war and violence through the eyes of what was an innocent child. Through this lens, the reader can begin to both experience and understand the horrific acts of war and its lasting toll on humanity, ripping away the naturalness in the hearts and minds of young and old.
Beah’s story begins during the peak of the civil war, which quickly spread throughout Sierra Leone, overtaking villages and tribes, converting the society to a bloodbath. Beah was captured at the age of 13, recruited by the Sierra Leonean Government army and forced into combat against the “rebels” – the Revolutionary United Front that began the unsuccessful 11-year war in 1991. During a period of almost three years, Beah was forced to smoke marijuana and take “brown brown,” a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder. Through this, the Government Army SDT steals its stolen youth, brainwashing them and turning them into master killers.
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You could say that Beah faced death on several levels. He lost his entire immediate family who were slain in the war, he witnesses the killing of some of his closest friends, and at only the age of 13 loses his innocence. He is plagued with a reoccurring nightmare of facing his own death, and then faces it for real on too many occasions. He wrote about the fine line between reality and the dream world, about how the line disappears and they become one. He often spent weeks on end with little or no sleep, attacking and advancing from village to village.
For most of us, we can escape our nightmares by waking up. Or rather, we cling to the dream world to avoid a harsh reality. For Beah, horror, fear, and danger followed him into both conscious and unconscious thoughts, leaving him in a world where day and night were same.
All the killing and violence, Beah thinks about who he is, who he really is, his cultural identity and the lost traditions from his village. In describing his survival story, Beah creates in his memories of childhood, of the value of storytelling, the important role of the elders, and the sense of community he had grown up with. Through these memories, though many no longer accessible until much later after his rehabilitation, he embraces his sense of self; his deeply attached identity giving him and the reader a sense of hope.
Throughout the story, Beah’s underlying message is very clear: he witnesses the destruction of not only his village, but the traditions and values within the Sierra Leonean village community. It is precisely these observations that emphasize the contrast in functionality of village life both before and during the war.
Beah watched the war literally turn what was once a loving and nurturing community upside down. Adults or elders, the most respected in African society, began to fear their own children, unsure of their involvement as soldiers. On countless occasions, Beah witnessed children killing and mutilating adults, and setting villages on fire. The older generation was no longer respected, and made to feel inferior, while the traditional values in the community were made obsolete. Instead, there was a culture of war, replaced by values of camaraderie between soldiers, of violence and effectiveness of killing.
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Eventually, Beah is rescued by UNICEF and placed in a rehabilitation camp in Freetown, where he goes through yet another traumatizing experience of withdrawal from drugs and violence. After sometime, he gradually crawls his way back into civilian life. He flees Sierra Leone to New York City where he meets his future foster mother, Laura Simms and finishes his last two years of high school at the UN International School. It is here that he faces a new challenge, being tormented by his peers’ and shadowed by society’s fear, as well as their curiosity to know more about his violent past.
III. CHARACTERS
MAJOR CHARACTERS
Ishmael Beah
-He was a child soldier for the Sierra Leone Armed Services during the civil war with the RUF, the Revolutionary United Front, known as the rebels. The rebels are blamed for the death of Ishmael’s family, and his soldiering is motivated by his desire for revenge.
Esther
-She Ishmael’s nurse at Benin House, the rehabilitation center where he is brought after the war. She treats Ishmael’s wounds and encourages him to talk about his experiences. When Esther brings him a cassette of rap music and a Walkman, Ishmael has a breakthrough in his therapy. He begins telling her his stories and processing his pain.
Uncle Tommy
-He is Ishmael’s father’s brother. He is a carpenter in Freetown who struggles to raise his children and the children of relatives who can’t care for them. He is a kind and gregarious man who loves to laugh and to help others.
The Lieutenant
-He is a father figure in the Sierra Leone Armed Services. He trains the boy soldiers and leads them into battles against the RUF. He and Ishmael bond over their mutual love of Shakespeare, and Ishmael looks up to the Lieutenant. When UNICEF comes to rescue the boy soldiers, it is the Lieutenant who hands them over, and Ishmael feels betrayed and angry. The Lieutenant is an important part of the family that Ishmael declares loyalty to during the war.
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Laura Simms
-She is a storyteller in New York City. She and Ishmael bond when he visits the United Nations to share his story of being a boy soldier. Laura invites all the children from the delegation back to her home at the conclusion of the conference. For Ishmael, Laura represents an outsider who truly cares about the fate of children in war-torn countries. She listens to and honors their stories and teaches them how to share their stories with the world.
MINOR CHARACTERS
Alhaji
-He is one of Ishmael’s best friends in the army. He is also rescued by UNICEF and placed in the same rehabilitation center.
Gasemu
-He is a banana farmer from Ishmael’s village. Ishmael and his friends meet him again outside the village where the boys believe their families are hiding. He is responsible for the delay that causes the boys to reach the village just as the RUF attack. Ishmael blames him for his family’s death and attacks him, but the other boys hold Ishmael back and claim that Gasemu actually saved their lives.
Leslie
-She is Ishmael’s case worker at the rehabilitation center. He is responsible for helping Ishmael make decisions about his future once his therapy is over. Leslie finds Uncle Tommy, which opens the doors to Ishmael’s new life and new home.
Mambu
-He is a child soldier in the same rehabilitation center as Ishmael. He is key to the violent attack on the center’s staff. He and Ishmael later sell their school supplies to pay for their adventures in the city.
Musa
-He is one of Ishmael’s friends from his village. He and Ishmael meet in the forest and struggle to survive together.
Kanei
-Another of Ishmael’s friends from his village with whom Ishmael struggles to survive.
Junior Beah
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-He is Ishmael’s older brother by one year. While running from the RUF, Junior and Ishmael are separated. Months later, Ishmael learns that his brother escaped the attack and may be alive. When Ishmael finds the village where he believes his family is hiding, the RUF attack again. Junior’s body is never found but he is presumed dead.
Mohamed
-He is Ishmael’s best friend. Though Mohamed remained in their village on the first trip, his fate was similar and the boys are reunited at the rehabilitation center. Mohamed is an important part of Ishmael’s emotional journey back from the war. He and Ishmael attend school together in Freetown, and Ishmael calls him his brother.
Talloi
-He is a mutual friend of Junior and Ishmael. He is part of the rap and dance group that Ishmael and his friends created when they were eight years old. He is part of the group that helps Ishmael survive in the forest.
Gibrilla, Kaloka, and Khalilou
-They are mutual friends of Junior and Ishmael. They live in Mattru Jong and are part of the group of rappers that invites the boys to perform.
IV. SETTING
-The story takes place in Sierra Leone during Beah’s childhood, around 1993. The way the setting affects the story is that if they had been in any other place the story wouldn’t have been taken as seriously. The setting of the story is in a war torn country during a civil war. This is Significant because his home Sierra Leone was in the middle of a vicious civil war where he became a soldier of war.
V. POINT OF VIEW
-This story is in first person point of view in Ishmael’s perspective. Ishmael is against the war at the beginning and the end of the book. When he is a soldier in the war he finds himself obsessed with killing the rebels and he is in support of the war and stopping the rebels. After rehabilitation he is against the war and wants it to end. ” I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end.” Ishmael pg.14
VI. CONFLICT
-The rebels who kill civilians are the main conflicts. Later, the antagonist becomes Ishmael when he cannot find the strength within himself to recover from a “bloodthirsty soldier” to a child once more. “I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end”
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Conflict can be external or internal creating depth in a character and making a very complex journey. Ishmael Beah the author of A Long Way Gone goes through many trials and conflicts that he has to overcome, creating his identity. Ishmael losses everything that has meaning to him, being made into something he is not. Facing a harsh reality of his own life. The decision whether to forget and move ...
VII. PURPOSE
-The book is really arguing against being a child soldier. The loss of innocence: which he argues as essential for all children, the central argument. It argues against children soldiers but also against the loss of innocence. He talks about how snorting brown and shooting men was dehumanizing and how he became a machine. Look in the book where the UN officials are dehumanizing the boy soldiers. How they had been programed to hate the rebels and even fight intensely with them at the camp intended on re-entering them into society. He is arguing that the war took away his childhood. If it were a novel the great scene where he is going through drug withdrawals would be a classic scene of American literature, it is so powerful when you have to think about being a programmed child and then coming back into normal society. It is easily comparable to being insane and then gaining your sanity; it really is that powerful.
VIII. IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS – QUOTES AND ANALYSIS
a.) Ishmael Beah, p. 166
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.” That night I wanted the sky to talk to me.
-Beah makes this statement in Chapter 17, immediately after repeating his fascination with the appearance of the moon in Chapter 1. The sky again represents the natural world – the world greater than that of civil strife and human violence. For the past several years leading up to this moment, Beah has been divorced from the redemptive power of nature.
b.) Ishmael Beah, p. 122
Whenever I looked at rebels during raids, I got angrier, because they looked like the rebels who played cards in the ruins of the village where I had lost my family. So when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many as I could, but I didn’t feel any better.
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-Beah sums up his coping mechanism and motivation for becoming an effective killer in the Sierra Leone civil war. He channels his pain at the loss of his family into a raging hatred of the rebels who killed his loved ones, and lets the fire of this anger burn through his gunfire.
c.) Ishmael Beah, p. 87
That morning we thanked the men who had helped bury Saidu. “You will always know where he is laid,” one of the men said. I nodded in agreement, but I know that the chances of coming back to the village were slim, as we had no control over our future. We know only how to survive.
-Despite their acceptance by villagers and refugees, Beah and his companions suffer the loss of one of their own – the coma-stricken Saidu. Their place in the village is confirmed by the sorrowful ceremony of Saidu’s funeral, a rite of passage heralding both belonging and loss. Despite their kindness in the wake of tragedy, Beah knows that he and his friends cannot find peace among the villagers.
d.) Ishmael Beah, p. 20
These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.
-After a month of living in the relative safety of New York City, Ishmael Beah is still haunted by nightmares of his time fighting the war in Sierra Leone. His new life is unfamiliar to him and cannot protect him from returning to the past terrors of his young life. Worse still, his vivid dreams constantly draw him back to the terror of his life in Sierra Leone as a victim of the RUF violence. He is a young man divided against him, as his country had been divided against itself – in both cases, due to the rebels’ violent actions.
e.) Ishmael Beah, p. 59
My eyes widened, a smile forming on my face. Even in the middle of the madness there remained that true and natural beauty, and it took my mind away from my current situation as I marveled at this sight.
-Even amid the horrors of civil war, Beah can see a grander perspective when confronted by natural beauty. He and his companions had never seen the ocean, so the sight, sound, and smell of it overwhelm them with joy. For the first time since any of them fled the rebels, they joke with one another, wrestle in fun, and play soccer on the beach. The boys have a moment of respite from their terrifying ordeal, and in that moment remind the reader (and each other) that they are still children at heart, forced to grow up too quickly because of circumstances beyond their control.
IX. CONCLUSION
Everyone in the world should read this book. I like this book not just because it contains an amazing story, or because it’s our moral, bleeding-heart duty, or because it’s clearly written. We should read it to learn about the world and about what it means to be human. Ishmael Beah’s story tears my heart to pieces and then forces me to put it back together again, because if Beah can emerge from such horror with his humanity intact, it’s the least I can do. I don’t like the idea where innocent young people have fight and kill other people. They are young and have also a freedom to do whatever they want as a child like to play and learn things about life.
A Long Way Gone
memoirs of a boy soldier
Nicole Aguilar
Block 3
Mrs. Toppott
November 22, 2013
Works Cited
Beah, Ishmael.(2007).
A Long Way Gone: memberof a child soldier. Vancouver:Douglas&Intyretd
12 12 1992. N.p., Online Posting to ANne gregor. E-mail. <http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/a-long-way-gone-memoirs-of-a-boy-soldier>.
02 14 2001. N.p., E-mail. <http://a-long-way-gone.blogspot.ca/2012/06/setting-long-way-gone-takes-place-in.html>.
19 2 2002. N.p., E-mail. <http://spams.edublogs.org/2012/06/07/book-recommendation-a-long-way-gone-by-ishmael-beah/>.
