Long Way Gone Themes

The book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, the main character Ismael Beah tells a story of his first hand account of Sierra Leone’s civil war. Ismael Beah was a boy soldier who went from village to village with his brother and some friends in search of food and shelter. Beah was eventually brainwashed into thinking that what the group was doing would make up for his own family’s death. While his is fighting for the government he is heavily drugged to the point that he believes that what he is doing is the right thing. His lieutenant ended up letting him go with UNICEF so they can have better lives. He was sent to the Benin Home where he suffers from drug withdrawals and constant fighting and he ends up getting really hurt. While he was there, he met a nurse who helps him get over what he did.

Ismael Beah ends up going to New York to talk in font of the UN where he realizes that what he has gone through could potentially save

The Book a Long Way Gone shows the reader what happens when a nation goes through a civil war. “This is one of the consequences of the civil war. “People stop trusting each other, and every stranger becomes an enemy” (Beah, 37). When most people hear civil war they think of adults fighting for power, but never how they get that power. In the cases of counties like Serria Leone they turn to children to do the grunt work of war. Political instability is caused by corrupt politicians who only care about lining their own pockets rather than taking care of those who live in their country. When the citizens are not taken care of they tend to come together and try to over throe the government for the change they want. If the change doesn’t come the civilians can use violence to over throw the government which can lead to a civil war between the “rebels” and the