Dreams In A Long Way Gone

In his book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah retells the very intense and traumatic events of being forced into the Sierra Leone civil war at such a young age. As he wanders through the African wilderness, trying to escape the Rebels, Beah explains old memories of his past to the readers. These memories mostly consist of his family and old adages he was told by them. One of these adages is about the moon, which will act as comfort for Beah as he searches for his family. Another thing that comforts as well as saves Beah throughout his journey is music. Beah and his friends love to rap and dance, so while he and his traveling companions venture on, they have a keepsake from their former lives before the war affected them. The audience notices right after the second chapter that dreams will become an important aspect of the memoir. The dreams Beah experiences are nothing but reminders of his actions in war and the death of his family, which bring no comfort to him.

One would think that dreams would soothe Beah too, but for him, they only bring fear, angst, and sadness. The first dream the audience hears about takes place years in the future, when Beah is living a calm life in New York City. He is pushing a wheelbarrow holding a dead body and writes, “I lift the cloth from the body’s face. I am looking at my own” (Beah, 2013, p. 32). This dream is very important because it displays the idea that even years after the war, Beah is still affected by the memories of past events. The dreams cease while he is a soldier, but once rehabilitated, they return with him as the victim of pain. “Each time a person was stabbed, I felt it worse; I saw the blood dripping from the same part of my body as that of the victim” (Beah, 2013, p. 198). It seems that after Beah exits the war, he realizes the violence that he has committed, and begins to feel it through his dreams. Shmoop