The imagery of Ishmael Beah’s memoirs makes readers become witnesses in numerous acts of unimaginable violence. Instead of hearing about Beah’s experiences, we participate actively as we read further into the daily life of boy soldiers. Many of the grim images left me breathing heavily because I could actually “see” what Beah describes in each horrific scene. One scene in particular earlier in the book, made me realize that even from the very beginning, boy soldiers are able to forget their morals, feelings, and identities and accept only what they see. When the day-to-day imagery is so devastating, Beah, and other boy soldiers can never reach Maslow’s cognitive needs level.
The scene which I refer to in the above paragraph is when Beah witnesses a woman running with a small child on her back. Beah describes the amount of blood running down the dress, and how she leaves a trail of blood as she runs. The reader finds out that the woman has not been wounded, but her baby, was the one who was shot. The most difficult part for me of this scene was when the author described how innocent the baby’s face was even though she was already deceased. The author even refers to the woman as “lucky” because she was not the one who was shot. It was from this scene in the beginning that I learned that Beah was able to forget his previous values as he learned to think about what was only in front of him.
This scene is one of many heart-stopping moments; however, the author doesn’t seem like he was bothered by it too much. He seems to accept it and doesn’t ever question or wonder or explore about why such violence was happening. As a result, I do not think that Beah, at least not before he was rehabilitated, could ever reach the point of cognitive needs of Maslow’s hierarchy. Beah never seems to seek out meaning in any of the gruesome events that he writes about. Without seeking a reason for the terrible events he witnessed, he stops climbing the hierarchy and he doesn’t even want to try and understand (at least in the beginning), why so many innocent people, particularly children have died as a result of the war.
Ishmael Beah describes scenes where he kills innocent people and doesn’t even think about why he has killed them. He doesn’t question his own previous reasoning, such as, what is right or what is wrong because he has been brainwashed to follow orders. This was difficult to read because many of the “crimes” he committed were brutal murders which almost became a type game among him and the other boy soldiers. I think that he could possibly achieve the esteem needs of Maslow’s pyramid by becoming respected by other boy soldiers, but he wasn’t able to reach the next level, at least, not until he could see a bigger picture than the blood and death in front of him each day.
