Reflection On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

The Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah remarked itself as a best selling child soldier book ever written.The book gets more interesting and induce reader’s curiosity ,when they question about incidence that occur during the war.In A Long Way Gone memoir, the author reveal how vital was his actions to his survival. When he was 12 years old Beah’s village was attacked by rebel forces. Ishmael is separated from his family and eventually forced to serve as a child soldier for the Sierra Leone Military.When UNICEF intervenes, Beah is rehabilitated . However Beah has already experiences the bloodshed and violence of war at that time.Then eventually, becomes a spokesperson against using children as soldiers. Through the painful experience , he did many cruel thing that he was never capable of doing before the war for the sake of survival.

Ishmael Beah opens the novel A Long Way Gone when he was at ten years old and had an innocent heart that doesn’t recognise the destructive nature of the civil war as it reaches his village.Beah had some hints of war from the movies that he knew like The Rambo that denies every fact the the people from attacked villages told him before he himself became a victim of war.He could not grasp the events that people from war told him until his village turned into chaos.The first physical encounter of war of Beah, is when he find his parents after the RUFs attacked his village left him in confusion and bloodshed..Then, he experiences fear and horrified by the nightmares.

He was also afraid being caught and shot by the RUFs.Thus portrays his lost of

innocence.

Uncontrollable deprivation progressively lead Ishmael and his friends to abandon the moral that they had before the war to satisfy their basic needs.For instance,Beah and his friends stole food from a child after they could find any food in the forest.Before the war, Beah wold not have done this but it reflects the extent that war had lead Beah to in order to survive.

After being caught and threatened by Sierra Leone government army Beah faces new challenge in his war life..He begin to become the man that he was afraid of : a soldier.Soon that becomes his reality as he gain control of his fears.For example Beah said that he was able to sleep peacefully for the first time after the war started as he was sleeping with his gun aside him.Moreover, he loss his innocence emotionally and mentally as it was replaced by murder and violence .However, his act was only for his survival and to adapt to his lawless community.For example, he said that, it take a life to save his life everyday during the war.He also mention that he only had two options which is to kill or to be killed. The both choices that he had nothing but bad impact which lead him to a major dilemma.

During his time as a soldier he was insisted to consume a drug called brown brown and marijuana.This drugs induce Beah to adapt the new environment by forgetting his pre-war memories.Brown brown was a mixture of cocain and gun powder.He was also brainwashed to justify his actions as a killing machine when the solider remind him what the RUFs done to everything he calls as happiness before the war.once ,he was when the general gave him a special name for his braveness. This proves that he does not fell guilty for taking other lives anymore.

Everyone questioned how a young boy could lived through as a child soldier fighting for his country which took everything from his and the fact that he did many cruel thing that he was never capable of doing before the war for the sake of survival.Some called him as miracle.Eventually the miracles sets him to a new life.Moreover, regain some experience that he deserved during his childhood.

Bibliography

Beah, I. (2007). A long way gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux