Narrative

Narrative: Ishmael Beah – Child Soldier

Prepared by Eric Malekos and Anthony Richardson

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is an autobiographical account of his late childhood and impressment into the army as a child soldier. Ishmael is 12 years old when his village first experiences the violence that has been plaguing Sierra Leone. After a short time on the run with his friends, Ishmael is abducted into the army. Although initially scared and unwilling to kill, Ishmael under the influence of corrupt officers and drugs begin to relish the life as a soldier and the power it affords him. After almost 3 years as a soldier he is released to UNICEF – an international aid agency that helps – among other things - to rehabilitate children exposed to war. While Ishmael is initially very hostile to the UNICEF volunteers, he eventually bonds with a nurse named Esther. She shows interest in him and gives him the opportunity to go to America and tell his story before the United Nations along with kids from other countries. This respite from the violence and chaos of Sierra Leone is short lived, and when he returns after two weeks the town his staying in – Freetown – is invaded and the uncle he is living with – the last of his family – is killed. At this point Ishmael decides to travel back to America. He makes the journey to New Guinea, where he contacts a woman he met in America and is able to secure a plane ride back to New York. At the end of the story he ends up being adopted by the woman – Laura Simms.

Ishmael and his friends travelled from village to village working for food. When work is unavailable, however, they must resort to stealing to survive. “That night we were so hungry that we stole people’s food while they slept. It was the only way to get through the night” (Beah 15). This is a case of injustice promoting injustice – Ishmael and his friends are unable to fulfill the basic need of eating, so they become part of the injustice of stealing. The problem of surviving in war environments is an injustice that no one system can be blamed for, nor is there a real way to combat it. If one were to place blame on a single entity it would be the international community because of its inability to prevent the conflicts that precipitate these situations. While aid organizations usually do come in to provide food and medical supplies for people in these situations, they are unable to do so when fighting is still taking place.

A few weeks after being forced out of his village, Ishmael finds a village under the protection of the army to stay in. Shortly after, however, the main rebel group – the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) – begins sending “messengers” to the village telling the villagers and soldiers that they are going to attack them. The messengers were not the typical kind of messenger and Ishmael describes one of the more ghastly ones: “One of the messengers was a young man. They had carved their initials, RUF, on his body with a hot bayonet and chopped off all his fingers with the exceptions of his thumbs (Beah 21). As a human being the “messenger” has inherent rights, and mutilating his body is a blatant violation of his dignity and an obvious injustice. The government as a system is failing in its ability to protect its citizens, but that raises the question of whether the inability to act is evil. In this case, it is not, and the only “system that can really be called evil is the rebel organization.

After being forced into the army Ishmael is trained to kill and eventually caries out this order – “I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them inside my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head” (Beah 75). In a situation such as this one may jump to the conclusion that Ishmael is an “evil” person. This is not the case however as Ishmael is a good person caught up in a terrible situation. So, while it is easy to see the injustice Ishmael is causing – death of another human – on should also recognize the injustice he is suffering – loss of innocence, self-esteem, and the ability to choose his own actions. The main system involved in this injustice is the government and specifically the army. Under the auspice protecting citizens from the rebels, the army commits heinous acts of abduction, torture and murder that are on par with the rebels.

Ishmael now lives in America with a foster mother. This outcome is not typical of child soldiers that have been put into this situation. Most that are fortunate enough to survive the fighting are not able to violence of their home countries. Furthermore emotional and physical issues that result from being forced to kill, heavy use of drugs, sexual assault and other traumatic events stay with these children for their entire lives. That said, international agencies such as UNICEF are working to end the use of child soldiers and rehabilitate former child soldiers. Furthermore some countries are beginning to bring children in and setting up secluded communities where former child soldiers can re-learn how to function in society.