I have recently read a fantastic book: A Long Way Gone. This isn't the review of the week that I promised, but I had to write an in-class essay about it for my Comparative World Cultures class, and I thought that I'd share it with you guys, especially because it seems as though all of my book reviews have been incredibly negative recently. If you want my rating for it, I give this book a 4.75 out of 5 stars, and a recommendation to read it. The review for the week will come out when I'm able. Hope you enjoy!
Question: What are the essential experiences of Ishmael Beah’s life that give him the resilience to recover from being a child soldier and the reasons for writing his memoir?
A Long Way Gone, a memoir written by the former child soldier Ishmael Beah, tells a story of a child soldier whose life had been seemingly destroyed. Rebels began to attack Sierra Leone, killing innocents and burning down villages, causing Ishmael to lose his family, his sense of purpose, and every aspect about him that made him human. Then a hollow shell, Ishmael was taken in by the Army to train as a child soldier, and began to learn how to commit morbid acts without as much as a second thought. However, his situation began to change when he along with other child soldiers were taken in by UNICEF® in order to be rehabilitated. Ishmael Beah’s story then takes a different route, turning from a story that seems to be devoid of hope to a story of resilience and perseverance through the most difficult of times, and it is that ability to perseverance that made Ishmael want to share his story with the world.
When arriving at the UNICEF compound, originally Ishmael and his fellow “inmates” were rather hostile, not changing much from when they were in the war. However, once Ishmael began to go through withdrawal from the drugs that he took during his time as a child soldier, he began to have violent flashbacks of all of the horrible acts that he committed. He then began to feel incredibly guilty about them, nearly sinking into depression. Fortunately for him, there were aspects about UNICEF that caused him to want to change. Nurse Esther, for example, acted as a motherly figure to him during his rehabilitation, reassuring Ishmael and encouraging him to live. Being cared for by another human being is something that Ishmael had not experienced in quite some time, but it helped him regain his humanity. Later in his rehabilitation, Ishmael learned that his father’s brother was still alive, and eventually began to live in a real family again. In short, what truly caused Ishmael to be resilient throughout his rehabilitation is the love and care of another human being, causing him to regain his humanity and be able to forgive himself.
A story about surviving through a harsh situation is something that an audience has seen many times before, whether they are true or fiction, but people never seem to get tired of them.. People read these stories about hardships to obtain some sort of lesson. It is why tragedies like Oedipus The King and Antigone are still read today, and why the best stories seem to be the ones that either act as a denigration of human nature or a display of it. The main reason why Ishmael Beah wrote his memoir is to alert the world about the hardships of the child soldier, and how the world needs to step in to change that. It is to teach readers around the world that inhumanity exists and is forcing children to fight their battles. The memoir’s purpose is to show how humanity can still survive in the most dreadful situations, and that a little kindness to even the most detached human being alive can go a long way.
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