A Long Way Gone Summary

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, a former boy soldier with the Sierra Leone army during its civil war(1991- 2002) with the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), provides an extraordinary and heartbreaking account of the war, his experience as a child soldier and his days at a rehabilitation center. At the age of twelve, when the RUF rebels attack his village named Mogbwemo in Sierro Leone, while he is away with his brother and some friends, his life takes a major twist. While seeking news of his family, Beah and his friends find themselves constantly running and hiding as they desperately strive to survive in a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. During this time, he loses his dear ones and left alone in the

Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A long Way Gone, is very descriptive and has a very effective way of painting a picture in the reader’s mind of what he went through as a boy soldier. Throughout the memoir, Beah used quite a few statements that impacted me emotionally, on a personal level. His vivid detail, word choice and how personal, yet professional he kept his writing led me to understand how exactly the war affected him, and everyone else who lived, and lives, in Sierra Leone.

This memoir about a boy soldier was very condescending. This was a true story for the author, Ishmael Beah and his life-changing events that occurred in his past. Ishamel Beah was a twelve year old African boy who lived in Sierra Leone Africa who fled attacking rebels due to a civil war in his country, who wandered into different villages trying to avoid the violence that seemed almost inevitable. He sauntered along with his brother and friends who scraped by day-by-day scavenging for food and struggled for survival. In the fifth chapter of the book, Beah describes the struggles he went through by saying, “…our joints weakened and ached” (p. 30). After days of traveling, Beah was eventually taken by the group of rebels and became one of

Throughout the book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah retells his accounts of PTSD. He describes how this disorder has affected his life after he was rescued from the Sierra Leone Civil War. There currently are three million recorded cases of PTSD per year. That number only applies to the United States. Soldiers and many other types of people can develop a case of PTSD and I decided to further investigate this topic because of the wide range of people that this disorder affects. My grandfather was unfortunate enough to have a case of PTSD (he was a soldier in Vietnam), and this personal connection is another reason that I want to discover more about this topic.

This led to “occasional dangerous physical assaults on one another or even staff at the school” (United States, National). When reintegrated into normal society without treatment, the child soldiers reverted back to their only way of living, which was in the brain-washed state of constant warfare. Even when medically checked over, the Gulu Regional Referral Hospital wrote them off as “possessed demons”, failing to recognize the implications of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Outdated and ineffective programs brush aside the traumas of war and write them off as mentally deranged, which would further isolate the once child soldiers from society and cause them to deal with the repercussions of PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc. alone. This is why the United States should set up rehabilitation centers, allowing the large percentage of child soldiers to find solace and return to normalcy, preventing from slipping back into the travesties of war and to not pose a threat to society.

Imagine having to fight in a war you don’t want to fight in, seeing friends and family die all around you, but no matter how far you run you can never escape. Child soldiers in Sierra Leone do not have to imagine this - for them, it is reality. Ishmael Beah, who became a soldier at just age 12, as well as researchers such as Christophe Bayer, Fionna Klasen, Hubertus Adam know too well that the events in the war can never be forgotten. The story Beah told in his memoir A Long Way Gone captures the inhumane events that take place in Sierra Leone and tells of a story that many children have to endure. Sources like Harvard claim “among the 87 war-torn countries...300,000 - 500,000 children are involved with fighting forces as child soldiers.” Many of those children are being forced into the war without any choice at all and having to kill others as well. With this information we’re forced to ask the question: how are these children being affected by the war?

Being involved in war will scar someone for the rest of their life. The novel A Long Way Gone shows the effect on children and how they lost their childhoods. Adult soldiers are too corrupted by the evils of war. When they come home they are not the same person. Many are diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. PTSD is a mental health condition that is causes by a terrible experience. One in five of the more than two million United States service members who have fought in either Iraq or Afghanistan have returned with symptoms of post-deployment syndrome.

With the traumatic events causing PTSD come the reactions people will experience after a traumatic event. Nightmares associated with the incident, flashbacks, problems with sleep, and being jumpy are just some of the reactions people will have associated with their incident. The reactions will vary from one person to another and may not even be noticed until several months after a person returns from war. "Some go through a

One example of Boricevic Marsanic and their colleagues is, “Children of male veterans have a higher chance of attempting suicide” (Boricevic Marsanic et. al.).This quote explains how the disorder affects children who may never have a traumatic experience in their life. The disorder has mental effects on all the people associated, the veteran, their family, friends, everybody. Another example of how PTSD affects children and teens is “The presence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in trauma survivors has been linked with family dysfunction and symptoms in their children, including lower self-esteem, higher disorder rates, and symptoms resembling those of the traumatized parent” (Mellor et. al.). Mellor and the other authors of this article in an Australian magazine express how children tend to have more problems internally. The quote also states how the children may even have symptoms the parent with PTSD had, which means that it could cause problems for the child without them even having a traumatic moment in their

The Lord’s Resistance Army, or the LRA, is Africa’s most violent armed group and also the oldest. Joseph Kony formed the LRA in 1986 in northern Uganda, to fight against the Ugandan Government. At the height of the conflict, about two million people were displaced in northern Uganda. Since the LRA never gained public support, they turned to forcible recruitment to build up their army (“The Lord’s Resistance Army”). Kony, and the LRA believe that Uganda should be governed and run based on the 10 Commandments. They rely on the application of terror in order to keep their campaign alive. The war in Uganda being

Ishmael Beah had a really tough life throughout his childhood and teenage years. In his literary work, A Long Way

Ishmael Beah was a boy from Sierra Leone who became a soldier in the country`s tragic civil war. He spent nearly all his childhood running away from the war and eventually ended up joining the army. During difficult times, Ishmael always held on to hope to continue his life’s journey. In A Long Way Gone, the theme is “Always have hope”, and is shown through Ishmael Beah’s hope for a better life, to find his family, and through the rehab staff`s hope for the boy soldiers.

To effectively understand how dangerous a child soldier is one must understand the psychological effects a child soldier must overcome. Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier, now activist, from Sierra Leone was forced into war in 1991 when at the time he was only 13. In one of Beah’s interviews he explains the process of desensitizing youth to better prepare them for war “Destroy children’s family and town, when all is loss than you could manipulate them… the commander and other child soldiers are family now” (Beah). Soldiers often have lost everything when they join forces, or lose everything when forced to join.

Children experiencing PTSD can experience wetting of the bed, loss or inability to speak, acting out the event, or being very clingy with another parent or child.” (“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”) C. Main Point Three – Though there is not yet a cure for this disorder, there are many treatment options

The children soldiers are being raised in violence and are forced to commit horrible cruelties and ends up leading to depression. Child soldiers are subjected to threats, beating, whipping, if they disobey orders of attempt to escape. Drugs are given to the children to decrease their sense of fear and to help with their feelings of courage. The child soldiers are armed with rifles and other weapons take part in combat.