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?