The book A Long Way
Gone, by Ishmael Beah, is a powerful story about a boy named Ishmael, whose
family is taken away from him, leaving him all alone in the Sierra Leonean
wilderness. He is found by the Sierra Leonean Army and is trained to be a child
soldier against his will. He is sent to kill rebels who have slaughtered
families and are trying to overthrow the government. The book clearly depicts the level of
corruption, violence and drug use among the Army soldiers. I found it difficult to support their efforts
in the war because of all the corruption that was going on.
Despite the good
cause that the soldiers are fighting for, the violent and immoral tactics the
army uses makes the reader question how decent the soldiers truly are. For
example, one of the main tactics used by the rebels is to raid and attack
villages. They do this to get supplies, get more children or adults to fight
for them, or sometimes, just slaughter them for fun. Ironically, one of the
reasons the Army fights the rebels
besides protecting their government is to stop them from killing innocent
civilians and drafting more child soldiers.
The problem is that the Army’s tactics aren’t much better. In one line of the text Ishmael mentions what
they do when they run out of food, ammo, gasoline or drugs: “We raided rebel camps… we attacked civilian
villages to capture recruits and whatever else we can find.” (Ishmael, page 122) This quote shows the similarities between the
tactics used by the army and the rebels.
The violence in this book is incredibly graphic. Grotesque images show
how terrible the life of a child soldier, or any soldier is, in that
environment. I think that there is
enough graphic content that if it were to be put on TV, or in a movie, it would
be much too violent for many viewers to watch. For example, when the main
character is going on his first mission as a soldier, and they run into a rebel
group, he says, “the grenade’s blast got
only a few men, whose bodies flew in the air… a splash of blood hit my face… I
saw the soldier it had come from, blood poured out of the bullet holes in him
like water rushing through newly opened tributaries.” Graphic imagery like this was what made me
resist believing in Ishmael, because of his part in all this violence.
Finally, the drug
use in the book was very disappointing.
Ishmael describes his use of the many drugs he had access to as a
soldier: “smoking marijuana and sniffing Brown
Brown, cocaine mixed with gunpowder… and taking more of the white capsules,
as I had become addicted to them.” The
use of those drugs by the main character frightened me. Such a young boy doing
all these drugs given to him by adults. It was very depressing. Ishmael also
goes through withdrawal and intense rehab, which also was sad, even though the
process was beneficial to him.
Despite the parts of the book that
were sad and difficult to accept, I was amazed by the intensity of the book at
every page. It gave me a first hand account of the hardships that other
countries face. I was relieved that the characters made it out alive and were
able to be brought back into society and saved.
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