Ishmael Beah's Betrayal

Within Ishmael Beah’s book A Long Way Gone we see the sierra leone civil war take over and consume a young boy’s life. During Ishmael’s life his settings change rapidly because of the war, this causes him to change with his surroundings. Throughout the book the 3 reoccurring themes has to be family, death and food.

Ishmael Beah was born in the village of Mogbwemo in Sierra Leone in 1980. The Civil War in Sierra Leone displaced Ishmael and resulted in him becoming a child soldier for the Sierra Leonean Armed Forces. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier chronicles the physical and psychological horrors of war and Ishmael’s subsequent return to society. While visiting a neighboring village with his brother and a group of friends, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) pillaged Mogbwemo.

In the book ‘The Bite of the Mango’ by Mariatu Kamara and Susan Mcclelland, a group of individuals in Sierra Leone that call themselves the revolutionary united front (RUF) started a civil war to get back at the president of sierra leone. The RUF raped, murdered, and torchered innocent sierra leone people. ‘The Bite of the Mango’ is about a fourteen year old sierra leonean girls life during the civil war. Kamara describes the horrors the RUF put her and others through. Without the help of other countries she would have stayed in an unsafe environment and could have died.

How accurate is the novel “A Long Way Gone” to a historian studying child soldiers in Sierra Leone’s Civil War? It is the 1990’s; a marauding factional militia called “Revolutionary United Front” are engaged in a noxious fight for control against a feeble and poorly funded government army. Sierra Leone is gradually devolving into a macabre mess of blood and carnage; a far cry from the tropical oasis of yesteryear. Hordes of civilians are callously massacred; entire towns are wiped from the map and corruption belies every action. Upon finding salvation in the USA, Ishmael Beah has chosen to write a candid memoir that explores the atrocities he was forced to perpetrate.

“We must strive to be like the moon” p.16 Why does suffering happen to the innocent? Maybe without suffering in war there wouldn’t be any compassion and love in the world. Ishmael Beah a boy soldier who lost his childhood and everything he loved, fought with his conscience as the years went by as he killed his memoirs. This book is memoirs of boy soldiers and war.

A Long Way Home is a story told from a boy soldier named Ishmael. Ishmael is put in isolation as the war in his homeland, Sierra Leone quickly ravages through the country. His journey sets him deeper and deeper into the destruction and violence of the war. Ishmael struggles with internal and external battles that would set the tone for him keeping his hope and sanity. Ishmael’s story is one filled with bloodshed, tragedy, and lost of innocence as the story progresses.

“When you tell a story, you give it out to the world and whoever listens becomes a part of that story.” Ishmael Beah, raised a war child and now a published author, is very aware of the impact that words can have. Beah published his memoir in 2007, and with it relays the power of stories to influence people. Thus, stories are significant in A Long Way Gone, as they are used to symbolize hope, introduce a new perspective for the reader, and reflect the memoir’s themes. Throughout Beah’s life as a refugee and war child, stories became an anchor for him.

When a boy gets lost at a grocery store, he will usually start looking around for his mother. If he does not find his mother, he will run through the aisles and yell his mother’s name. He will eventually think he has lost his her forever and start crying. Not until his mother shows up and there he is happy—as if nothing ever happened. They go home to their house and their joyous family and live a happy life.

The rebels turned villagers against each other when they needed community most. Beah and Kamara did not avoid this fate. The two children allowed anyone around him to get hurt if it meant he would live another day. However, Kamara manipulated others so she may live. In the Sierra Leone War, victims like Beah and Kamara only thought of their own safety; depending on their selfishness to survive.

It is very evident that his inner conflict is a symbol of how hard it is for society to accept changes because he struggles with the question of why he joined the war. In reality, he really knows that the reason is different from what society really accepts. Later, he realizes that he does not really believe in the Republican cause. If fact, he discovers that he only joined the Republicans because they fought against Fascism. This reason is different from what is accepted.

Ishmael who was once a peaceful, innocent little boy, was transformed into a man killing machine like most children. The civil war in Sierra Leone had malformed many people’s lives, personality, and faith, bringing them to extreme measures. Families were torn apart by the war, everything had changed. Homes that used to once carry families and joyful memories were no longer there, everything was demolished. Like Ishmael many children were manipulated to join the war to avenge the deaths of their families, making the war more chaotic that it should have been.

Beah was exposed to and committed many offenses such as killing, stealing, and many forms of trauma. After a few long years, sixteen-year-old Beah is taken out of the war by UNICEF and sent to a rehabilitation center. Eventually, Beah is helped to find

He doesn’t fit into their society and has no way of knowing how to fit in. He has no companion, except his mom, and was prone to anger and indiscriminate violence.

In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar, Suleiman is a young boy growing up in Libya during the time of Qaddafi’s reign. Being raised by parents who are dissidents, Suleiman often finds himself surrounded by confusing situations where the line between loyalty and betrayal is blurred. Problems within the family only aid the struggle to determine the difference between betrayal and loyalty. Loyalty and betrayal go hand in hand, often getting confused with each other.

One would think that a war would be difficult to overlook in any country, especially if it had been actively raging on for over twenty years. Unfortunately, this was exactly the case in Uganda, Africa before the year 2012. During this monumental year, a group of filmmakers travelled to Uganda and made the discovery of a lifetime: a secret war between the citizens of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army, a large group of unorthodox soldiers who abduct children and force them to join their army. These kids are forced to carry weapons, mutilate or kill other children, and are often forced kill their own parents. This rebel army is led by malicious warlord, Joseph Kony.