Matt Kozek 8/9/15 Gillman A Long Way Gone A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is a memoir written by Ishmael Beah, an author from Sierra Leone. The book is a firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone . Beah ran away from his village at the age of 12 after it was attacked by rebels, and he became forever separated from his immediate family. He wandered the war-filled country and was forced to join an army unit who brainwashed him into using guns and drugs. By thirteen, he had perpetuated and witnessed a great deal of violence. At the age of 16, however, UNICEF removed him from the unit and put into a rehabilitation program. With the help of some of the staff he was able to return to a civilian …show more content…
As Beah and his group of friends walk to different villages they keep finding that because of the attacks they are not welcome in any villages, and that in many occasions Beah and his group are captured, questioned and even have their own shows stolen from them. After that Beah remembers back to his life when he could just walk into villages and be given food and housing for no cost. Also in the book Beah talks about he watched an old man who had no strength get beaten in front of him and the people who were doing were laughing the whole time. The civil wars caused all of Sierra Leone’s cultural patterns and process to be destroyed and ignored which lead to people beating brutality beaten, killed, and their lives …show more content…
The main plot of the book is that Sierra Leone is in a civil war between the government and rebels. So the book is about two political organizations fighting each other to gain control of Sierra Leone to run the country the way they want. At the end of the book more political organizations come into play. UNICEF comes into play at the end of the book when the government gives up its child soldiers one of them being Beah and Beah goes into a camp where he meets Esther and gets rebilibated. In the last few chapters Beah goes and talks in front of one of the biggest political organizations, the United Nations. Moreover, without political organizations this book would not be