Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

Did you know that there are 5,525,00 people that live in Sierra Leone? Ishmael Beah’s tragic transformation into an RUF child soldier, as well as his rehabilitation afterward, proves that all human beings can be given a second chance at life. Ishmael encountered many tragic things including starvation, forced to do things that were not right, and also getting beaten. He learned from what he has done moved on from it but will never forget the tragic things he has seen and done. A long Way Gone is a true story of Ishmael Beah, who becomes an unwilling boy soldier during a civil war in Sierra Leone.

Ishmael Beah was only 12 years old and was forced to grow up fast when the RUF had taken him. His body was forced to take the major changes and

“I was beginning to shake. The drugs from the previous nights, before were were brought to the city, had begun to subside in my system” (Beah, 137). Ishmael had a long road to recovery ahead of him. “I lay in my bed night after night staring at the ceiling and thinking, why have I survived the war?” (Beah, 179). One day he was fighting for fun and stealing to survive. Next he was expected to talk about his feelings and make new friends. During their first months in rehabilitation, Ishmael and other boys were constantly in fights. He struggled to adjust to the real world and normal human interaction, after he was a child soldier for two years of living a horrible

Each night he fought against night terrors that would leave him with violent migraines the following day. As his body went through horrible waves of drug withdrawal, he would black out and find himself with fear and anger. “I tried to think about my childhood days, but it was impossible, as I began getting flashback of the first time I slit a man's throat. The scene kept surfacing in my memory like lighting on a dark rainy night, and each time it happened, I heard a sharp ery noise in my head that made my spine hurt” (Beah, 160). However, Ishmael finally turned around and began seeing life from a more healthy perspective.“When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die. I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive”(Beah, 143). A nurse named Esther, was able to convince Ishmael to tell her about his past. They became very good friends and had very good trust between