Violence in A Long Way Gone
Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone, the tale of his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, is a gut-wrenching tale of child violence and loss of identity and connection with others. One of the most intriguing things about the book is its depiction of the violent setting Ishmael lives in; after his parents were killed and be was brought into a rebel army unit, Ishmael “became a ruthless, drug-addled killing machine,” only to be surreptitiously handed over to UNICEF some time later and asked to integrate into a more developed, Western life (Rayman, 2008). Of course, there are many different types of violence, and Ishmael was scarred in more ways than just the physical – emotional and psychological violence was also levied against him, and he unto others, making A Long Way Gone a chilling look into a world that is nothing but violence in every single form, and Ishmael’s conflict between who he is and who he had become.
Even before joining the army, Ishmael’s life is lived in an world surrounded by violence. Rebel attacks destroy nearby villages even in the first chapter, as Ishmael and his friends Junior and Talloi witness the horrific sights of bloody men running from violence and crying, dead bodies of children, and the murder of families by the rebels (Beah 24-25). This establishes the setting of Sierra Leone as a dangerous, almost apocalyptic place, with no one being safe, not even loving families (as seen later when a fleeing family is seen shot dead by rebel forces). These traumatizing images stick in Ishmael’s mind and haunt him greatly, causing further violence to his psyche, as he must constantly relive those days in his mind: “These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past” (Beah 33). The rebels became boogeymen whose existence would guarantee that Ishmael would not know peace until he was out of the region.
After joining the army to become a child soldier, Ishmael (as narrator) describes many horrific sights that sell the terrifying and nasty violence he is brainwashed into committing. The life of a child soldier like Ishmael is one of constant infighting, with people being shot and stabbed at frequent intervals; however, due to the indoctrination they had received, as well as the drugs they had become addicted to, Ishmael and the child soldiers found themselves insulated from feeling bad about what they had done: “We needed the violence to cheer us after a whole day of boring traveling and contemplation about why our superiors had let us go” (Beah 165). Because of the daily realities of the violence he would commit, he could not possibly react to it in a reasonable way anymore, instead seeing it as something to do to stave off boredom. This plays into the theme of violence as a pervasive, destructive force not just in a physical sense, but a psychological one – the mental shields Ishmael must put up in order to casually laugh through these atrocities is severely damaging to his sense of self and perspective, showing that each act of violence he sees or does hurts him in much the same way.
Ishmael’s hardened attitude as a child soldier reflects one of the macho constructs the novel explores and attempts to disprove – the idea of violence as something inherently adult and manly. Kyulanova writes that the book represents and tests the idea that “war can serve as a rite of passage to maturity and can accelerate the transition from childhood to adulthood” (28). Though Ishmael and his fellow child soldiers are certainly warriors, they are still children; they had yet to become ingrained into s table social structure or given real adult status. Instead, they are still just pawns for their leaders and lieutenants, who simply wish to have disposable cannon fodder they can keep pliant and coerce into doing their dirty work through drugs. Their resistance to the kindness and resources of UNICEF is proof positive of this; when they start running low on the drugs they have become addicted to, they call the UNICEF personnel “sissy civilians” and start to attack other rebel children who had also been placed in the facility (Beah 162). Ishmael and his fellow child soldiers had basically been bred to fight, so their rehabilitation process becomes not unlike a detox, where they must learn how to interact without fighting each other. During his rehabilitation, Ishmael learns the error of his ways, and yet he is still haunted by the horrors of what he had done; even though he is told that “None of these things are your fault,” he still cannot shake the guilt that he feels (Beah 199-200). In this way, the violence he commits and witnesses does not go away as soon as he is done; his emotional and psychological wounds stay with him.
One of the most fascinating things about the shift between Ishmael’s violent past in Sierra Leone and his modern life in America is that the violence he tries to run away from is something that is somewhat fetishized by his American peers. The beginning of the book is an exchange between Ishmael and some of his high school friends, who ask him if he had witnessed the fighting there. When he says that he did see “people running around with guns and shooting each other,” a friend replies simply with an awed “Cool” (Beah 13). The fact that he has these stories to tell about the violence he experienced begins to define him and his value to other Westerners; they are insulated from the true horrors of the violence, simply seeing Ishmael as a subject of fascination from a liberal multiculturalist perspective. The impression is made that at least part of Westerners’ association with him is in order to gain insight into this violence which fascinates them, which he cultivates into book deals, international celebrity status, and more. After understanding Ishmael’s horror at his own actions, the juxtaposition between the casual, academic interest Westerners have in his life takes on a macabre quality.
A Long Way Gone explores the ever-present effects of violence on those who have both witnessed and committed violent acts; violence itself gives Ishmael a horrifying life of constantly looking over his shoulder, only finding a measure of pride and happiness when he is brainwashed into committing violence for the sake of his manhood and adulthood. After his rehabilitation, he finds himself regretting his actions, the memories of his deeds haunting him, while he is faced with the naïve, anthropological interest of those around him in the West. This difference in perception of violence given one’s proximity to it is one of the more fascinating perspectives given in the novel, and offers a comprehensive view of Ishmael’s life as a child soldier.
Works Cited
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone. Sarah Crichton Books, 2007.
Kyulanova, Irina. "From Soldiers to Children: Undoing the Rite of Passage in Ishmael Beah's A
Long Way Gone and Bernard Ashley's Little Soldier." Studies in the Novel 42.1 (2010): 28-47.
Rayman, Graham. “Boy Soldier of Fortune.” The Village Voice. Mar 18, 2008.
<http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-03-18/news/boy-soldier/full/>.
