A Long Way Gone

A long way gone by Ishmael Beah is a memoir that describes his life as a human soilder and his life afterwards when he was struggling to try and convert back to a decent life he had before the war. The last blog post primarily was about separation being one of the themes of his book. Today, I am going to discuss more themes surrounding this book.

A loss of innocence could also be a theme in this book. During the book, the RUF, or the rebel forces take the mostly the children (mostly boys) so that they are able to fight in the war. I believe that they kill off all of the adults and take the children because the children's minds are able to be manipulated compared to an adults because they know what is right and wrong.. The violence that he sees in his home traumatizes him, but once he is turned into a solder, that is when he truly loses his innocence as a small boy. In the book, he even describes the methods used by the soldiers; one of them involving the kids to intake drugs into their system to make them somehow bury their feelings.

Another one of the themes that is in the book is the results of war. During the war there werelots of damage to Sierra Leon and its people. Many kids were forced participate in a war that they were not even part of,  Many families were separated and might not have seen each other probably in a long time or maybe even forever. The drugs that all of the kids in war are becoming addicted to are taking an effect on their humanity as well as whether or not they will be able to live to see the next day.