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?