A Long Way Gone: End

In the end of the book, Ishmael thankfully gets taken out of the war and is put into a rehabilitation center. However, all the boys that were put into the rehab center started acting like wild, caged animals. They attack the cook, throw bowls and other things at the nurses, and they even break into the medical supplies to fulfill their need for drugs. Once again, Ishmael is having another internal conflict with his need for drugs and violence in order to feel normal again and go back to how he was before the war. Ishmael goes through his first breakthrough in rehab when he meets a nurse named Esther. As I mentioned in my first blog post about the beginning of the story, Ishmael has a really strong connection and attachment to rap cassettes. In order to try to get him to open up, Esther buys him a Walkman and rap cassettes. At first it makes Ishmael mad but eventually he does open up to Esther and starts to talk about all of the painful memories of the war that he wanted to forget. Even though Ishmael does start to open up, he does have his moments of anger and will lash out out of nowhere. After all that he's been through, it's understandable that he most likely just wants to be alone. He relied on himself to survive and feels like at this point, there's no one he can trust but himself because everyone else betrayed him in some way during the war.

The rehab center somehow locates Ishmael's uncle Tommy and he returns home with his uncle in Freetown and begins the school year. On May 25, 1997 violence breaks out in the capital and for the next five months gunmen rule the streets, looting, raping, and killing people. This is ironic because Ishmael has escaped the war only for war to find him again. Uncle Tommy becomes ill one night and ends up dying in Ishmael's arms. He calls a girl Laura that he met and asks if he can come to New York to live with her and she agrees. Ishmael ends up escaping the country illegally and is sheltered as a war refugee.

At the end of the book, there is a question asked that is a story usually told to young people in the village once a year. "There was a hunter who went into the bush to kill a monkey. He had looked for only a few minutes when he saw a monkey sitting comfortably in the branch of a low tree. The monkey didn't pay him any attention, not even when his footsteps on the dried leaves rose and fell as he neared. When he was close enough and behind a tree where he could clearly see the monkey, he raised his rifle and aimed. Just when he was about to pull the trigger, the monkey spoke: 'If you shoot me, your mother will die, and if you don't, your father will die.' What would you do if you were the hunter?" (217). Ishmael thought about this for years and he finally concluded to himself that if he were the hunter, he would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament.

Q: What do you think is the reasoning behind Ishmael's answer to that question? What would YOU do if you were the hunter?

A Long Way Gone: Middle

In the middle part of the book is where Ishmael is on his long journey to find peace from all of the madness and war around him. He knows he has to keep moving or the Rebels are going to catch up with him and either recruit or kill him. At this point, him and his group are just traveling from village to village, hoping to find shelter for as long as they can. When they entered a new village, they realized that it had already been attacked by the Rebels. The villagers stole their shoes and chased them out of the village which now forced them to walk on 120-degree temperature sand while barefoot. The boys are hungry and exhausted and every time Ishmael acknowledges the struggles that he is facing, his mind starts to wonder to darker places. He begins to fear not only his surroundings but he starts to fear himself too. His mind keeps going to violence. This shows the concept of man versus self because he has to fight himself mentally to be able to survive. In every village that Ishmael and his group go to, people will either fear them or attack them. They are being treated like dangerous monsters and Ishmael is afraid that he might actually be becoming a monster.


A few chapters later, Ishmael ends up getting recruited. He now is being forced to kill people and has no other choice if he wants to survive. In the book, Ishmael says "A young soldier came by with a plastic bag full of some kind of tablets" (116). The corporal starts giving him drugs so that it will boost his energy to be able to fight in the war. These drugs basically put him through a "trip" so that he just blanks out and will be able to kill people without hesitation or being afraid. Ishmael and his friends are still children and don't know whether they should express themselves like children or to just suck it up and act like adults. They don't know what is going on around them or what's going to happen and that is what scares them the most. They still have the ignorance and innocence inside of them as children and they aren't able to express that anymore because that's what puts them in danger.  What is happening around them doesn't feel real until they are forced to take part in the killing as well, which is the one thing they were once against. "A splash of blood hit my face. In my reverie I had opened my mouth a bit, so I tasted some of the blood" (118). This is when it all finally became real to Ishmael. He had just watched someone be shot to death and now he has the blood of a dead man on his face.  

Q: Do you think you would be able to grow up this quickly at 15 and throw your childhood away? Do you think you'd be able to handle everything you witnessed and still be able to be strong and cope with it?

A Long Way Gone: Beginning

The war book that I have been reading is called "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah. It is a memoir that Ishmael wrote about his experience in having to become a child soldier when he was only 15 years old. In the first chapter, he talks about how his journey began when he was 10 years old, right before the civil war comes to his village. Ishmael, Junior, Talloi, and Mohamed have a rap group together that they formed when Ishmael was eight years old. In January of 1993, they all leave their village of Mogbwemo to take a trip to the town of Mattru Jong. Right after they leave, the Rebels attack their village. Ishmael doesn't know if his family or anyone from his town his dead or alive. "The rebels had attacked the mining areas...this town will be next, according to the teachers" (9). Ishmael and his group wanted to go back to their own village to see if everyone was okay but once they realized that the Rebels were coming for the village that they were in at that time, they knew they just had to keep it moving and couldn't turn back.

In this chapter, comparison and contrast are used to show what Ishmael's concept of the war was before the rebels had attacked. It makes more of an emphasis on how ignorant Ishmael and his friends were to how traumatizing the war really was because they did not realize the effects of war until it hit them right in the face. His flashbacks that he has of his peaceful life before the war show the beginning of him starting to lose his innocence as a young child. Also, the rap music that him and his friends are into, represents Ishmael's way into the modern world. Rap becomes a way for the group to be able to express themselves through the lyrics that they write themselves. Ishmael carries a cassette tape with their raps on it around with him all the time which symbolizes him holding onto what he has left of his childhood and his innocence.

Q: How would you feel if you knew you would literally have to run to save your life? Do you think you'd be able to process what was going on at such a young age?