Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

In some cases, those who return from war experience post traumatic stress disorder; those with PTSD may seek counseling or silently agonoize. In Ishmael Beah’s memoir , A Long Way Gone, he explained his own experience in war as a child, and readers could see both physical and emotional changes. War changes people and it affects people differently. Some are not affected, while some have a hard time recuperating. Ishmael was just a young boy when he was taken into war, which made his worldliness worse. After he was a boy soldier, he had to undergo rehabilitation to conform back to typical society. Ishmael did not adjust very smoothly, in fact he took a long time but eventually came around. Ishmael had mental consequences due to war. Ishmael’s

Ishmael lost himself and friends fighting the rebels. He thought that “[p]erhaps all of [Saidu] had died that night…” (Beah 87). Ishmael was confused by what Saidu had said that he was slowly dying each day; and now that he was dead Ishmael thought he died the night they survived an attack. Ishmael and his friends were not dead, but dying. He was dying in his mind and could not control it. Ishmael was on a search to find safety and get out of war, he thought he found safety at a town called Yele (Beah 101). Ishmael and his group he had tried to find safety at Yele, but instead of leaving the war he was brought closer to it. He did not want to die and leave everything behind like Saidu. He was recruited at Yele and that is where his troubles began. Ishmael’s mind was plagued with thoughts from both his child self, and his soldier self. Throughout the novel Ishmael used the sky and weather to portray feelings, and one day he saw that “[o]ne side of the sky was completely blue and the other was filled with stagnant clouds” (Beah 90). In this, Ishmael uses the clouds to show how he is both light and dark, good and evil, and that there is a war going on the outside and