Skip to main content

In Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Beah’s narrative follows a common trajectory in narratives about war: he moves from a state of innocence...

Ishmael Beah's novel A Long Way Gone opens when the protagonist is ten years old and completely innocent about the destructive nature of the civil war moving inexorably towards his village, Mogbwemo. Although Ishmael had previously encountered refugees fleeing the path of violence, he couldn't grasp the reality of war until rebels actually attacked Mogbwemo; Ishmael internalizes the chaos, confusion and bloodshed, which represents the loss of his innocence. Inevitably, he feels terrified, horrified, plagued by nightmares, and afraid of being caught and conscripted into the rebel army. 


Dire necessity and extreme deprivation brought about by starvation slowly prompt Ishmael, his brother and their friends to abandon their pre-war ethics and morals in order to satisfy their basic needs. For example, while on the run from the rebels and overcome with hunger, Ishmael and his cohorts resort to stealing from strangers after they are unable to buy food; this is an injustice they would not have contemplated committing before, but it reflects the extent to which they are willing to compromise their value system in order to survive. 


After Ishmael is caught and conscripted by the Sierra Leonean government army, he faces an entirely new, harsher reality of becoming the embodiment of the evil he had been fleeing. This transformation moves beyond simply loss of innocence into mentally and emotionally inhabiting the depravity (murder, violence, loose morals) he had previously abhorred. However, his behavior is again a matter of survival and adapting to a lawless community; fitting in and complying with orders -- even brutal ones -- are necessities. One 'effective' method the army employs to force the child soldiers to adapt to their new environment is to make them addicted to drugs: marijuana and "brown brown", a cocaine gunpowder mix. Being high enables Ishmael to stay emotionally numb to the losses he experienced during the war and to comply with the army's brainwashing doctrine about justified revenge killings on rebels; perversely, Ishmael's squad becomes his replacement family.


When Ishmael is eventually liberated by UNICEF at age fifteen and placed in a rehabilitation center in Sierra Leone, he slowly begins to regain his humanity by experiencing the healing kindness and patience of the nurses and hospital staff. Wracked by drug withdrawal symptoms and tortured revelations of atrocities he had committed, Ishmael has a rocky road to recovery. One nurse in particular, Esther, helps him with music therapy and offers a calm, empathetic, dependable presence. Her influence, combined with his own desire to process his traumas and reconnect with the happier memories of his childhood, enable Ishmael to regain his core humanity; creating a new family dynamic with Esther, his uncle Tommy, and friends at the center helps Ishmael build hope, self-awareness and confidence. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more