In Ishmael Beahs life story, A Long Way Gone, he writes about the events leading up to and becoming a boy soldier.

by vandjess260 (student)

A Long Way Gone: Becoming a Boy Soldier

In Ishmael Beah’s life story, A Long Way Gone, he writes about the events leading up to and becoming a boy soldier. He writes of his innocence and fear as a child, and how his separation from his family and his search for safety are the reasons he is captured and recruited by the army. Once he joins the army he is brainwashed into wanting vengeance on the rebels, and he becomes a killing machine. The events in Ishmael’s life during the war made him destined to become a boy soldier

At the beginning of the story Ishmael is an innocent child who only wants to rap. Before the rebels attack his hometown he leaves to Mattru Jong with his brother Junior and his friends. They have been practicing the dances to songs and memorizing the lyrics to perform at a talent show. “I loved the dance, and particularly enjoyed learning the lyrics, because they were poetic and it improved my vocabulary.”(6) He shows his innocence and ignorance of the war when he plays a trick on his brother and friends when he takes their clothes from them, “At one river that had a bridge across it, we heard a passenger vehicle in the distance and decided to get out of the water and see if we could catch a free ride. I got out before Junior and Talloi, and ran across the bridge with their clothes. They thought they could catch up with me before the vehicle reached the bridge, but upon realizing it was impossible, they started running back to the river, and just when they were in the middle of the bridge, the vehicle caught up to them. The girls in the truck laughed and the driver tapped his horn.”(8) This is one of the last times he ever laughs and has fun as a child. But after his hometown, Mogbwemo, is attacked by rebels he is inflicted with fear. He does not know what to do and he looks to his older brother and friends foranswers. “Talloi broke the silence. ‘We must go back and see if we can find our families before it is too late.’ Junior and I nodded in agreement.” (10) He shows his ignorance of being a child because he is scared and confused. He and his friends start to go back to Mogbwemo but turn around halfway when they see the horror of dead bodies, and people who have had their limbs chopped off. He becomes terrified and starts having nightmares where “[He would] lay sweating for a few minutes on the cool wooden floor where [he] had fallen.”(19) and he “could no longer tell the difference between dream and reality.”(15). He even became afraid to fall asleep. Ishmael’s fear of the war forces him and his friends to leave Mattru Jong and look for food and safety.

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Ishmael starts to lose his childhood innocence when he is separated from his family and friends. “I became frustrated living in fear. I felt as if I was always waiting for death to come to me, so I decided to go somewhere where at least there was some peace.”(46) After he leaves the safety of the forest he is alone and has to find food and safety on his own, so he wanders the jungles in search for these necessities. He wanders from village to village where he is sometimes mistaken as a rebel and is chased away. Ishmael finds different friends of his from Mattru Jong and he begins to search for safety with them. Together they aim to go to the coastal town of Yele where it is safe. When they finally arrive in Yele they live in peace there until the soldiers who are stationed there tell them that the rebels have surrounded them, and every man or child who does not help fight will be sent into the forest to be killed.

Ishmael has been recruited by the army. The army scares the kids into joining by showing the bodies of a man and his son who tried to escape the village but were killed by the rebels, and telling them gruesome stories, “The lieutenant went on for almost an hour, describing how rebels had cut off the heads of some people’s family members and made them watch, burned entire villages along with their inhabitants, forced sons to have intercourse with their mothers, hacked newly born babies in half because they cried too much, cut open pregnant women’s stomachs, took the babies out, and killed them…”(108), and saying that this would happen to them and their families if they did not join. The soldiers would taunt the boys by shooting rounds into the air and scaring them. After they had joined the training and brainwashing came next, “‘ [The rebels] have lost everything that makes them human. They do not deserve to live. That is why we must kill every single one of them. Think of it as destroying evil. It is the highest service you can perform for your country.’ The lieutenant pulled out his pistol and fired two shots into the air. People began shouting, ‘We must kill them all. We must make sure they never walk this earth again.’ All of us hated the rebels and were more than determined to stop them…”(108). They were taught how to use and care for their guns and love them “When it was my turn [to receive an AK-47], he looked at me intensely, as if he was trying to tell me that he was giving me something worth cherishing.”, kill a man with a knife, crawl through bushes, the whole time the corporal would brainwash them by screaming, “Visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you.”(112) Ishmael starts to lose his childhood innocence during this time when he starts to dream of killing the rebels and laughing during it. He gets his first taste of killing at his first battle. He still has some of his innocence when he leaves to go to the battle because he says, “I have never been so afraid to go anywhere in my life.” Ishmael is too afraid to shoot the rebels when they first start to fight. But when nine-year old Josiah is blasted by an RPG and Ishmael goes to find him, showing that he still has the ability to care. The corporal yells at him to fight so he returns to his position. He sees his dead friends around him and he remembers the lieutenant’s words, “They do not deserve to live.” He then shoots and kills his first man and gets his first taste of the monster he would become. “I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man… I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people. I shot everything that moved.”(119)

As Ishmael grew as a soldier he lost all his childhood innocence, “instead of playing soccer in the village square, I took turns at the guarding posts around the village, smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown, which was always spread out on the table, and of course taking more of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them.”(121)

He wins the corporals contest for killing the rebel the fastest and “[he] didn’t feel a thing for him, didn’t think that much about what [he] was doing.”(124) After he was announced the winner he was made junior lieutenant, and they celebrated that night by doing drugs and watching war movies. “[He] felt no pity for anyone. [His] childhood had gone by without [him] knowing… In [his] head [his] life was normal.”(126) Ishmael’s mind set completely changes into always wanting to kill and be like his newly found hero, Rambo. “Killing had become a daily activity”(126), and Ishmael no longer cared about what was right and wrong. In his mind all that mattered was that he killed every rebel he could to avenge his family. He had been completely brainwashed by the lieutenant and believed that everything he said and did was right. He had become a killing machine; a boy soldier.

Everything Ishmael first heard since the news that his hometown had been attacked leads him to become a boy soldier. In order for him to be recruited he needed to be afraid of everything to do with the war, and he needed safety. The military brainwashed him into believing that they would be safe with them and that killing every rebel would avenge their family and was the honourable thing to do for their country. By becoming this killing machine he lost everything that it is to be a child.

Jesse VanderWal