Ishmael titled the book A Long Way Gone because he was always a “long way” or far away from home. He was always walking and traveling because of the war, and he always had to go from village to village, farther and farther from his actual home to survive. He didn't have a choice but to keep going even if he didn't want to. For example on Pg.8 he walked for two days without stopping “I walked for two days without stopping.” Another example on Pg.60 when he had to walk barefoot because he didn't have any other choice but to keep walking. “Walking barefoot on the sand was like walking on a hot tar road. The only escape from this pain was to keep walking.” , “After I had cried for several hours, my feet became numb. I continued walking …show more content…
Closer to the end of the book was when he was really the farthest from home, he had a new home living with his uncle and you would've thought that, that would have been his permanent home, from where he didn’t have to run anymore. However, he still ended up having to run from there too because of the war. He never stopped running from any of the homes he had; he even ended up traveling to New York running from his uncle's house, the farthest away from any home he's ever had. Fortunately the home he had in New York was finally a home he could stay in without having to run. He could finally settle down. The title doesn’t go with the book just physically but mentally too because throughout the book his innocence went away more and more, because of what he saw and went through in the war. The more days that passed the less innocent he was, he saw dead bodies, people getting killed, and at some point he was the one killing. For example in chapter 8 he says “Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters. There was nothing we could do about it.” In chapter 13 we see that Ishmael had almost totally lost his innocence when he says “I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them.” , "We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for