Loss Of Innocence In A Long Way Gone

One of the most powerful scenes in the book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah for Ishmael Beah's character development is when Ishmael finally accepts Esther as a supportive figure in his life, she tells him that she can be his sister for a little bit and Ishmael accepts. This makes it visible that Ishmael is still intact with his human side. He can still care for others and show affection. Ishmael Beah goes through character shifts and through those character shifts we see him change in behavior and morals, but his humanity remains the same, his human identity is still the same despite everything that's happened to him. Through Beah, we find that we will always be human, Beah went through many hardships and still came out as a good person, he

In the book, Ishmael’s morals reflect that of a loss of innocence. The first example is when Ishamaels group raids a group of rebels and their lieutenant gives them the challenge to see who can kill the fastest. Ishmael confesses, “We were supposed to slice their throats on the corporal’s command. The person whose prisoner died quickest would win the contest. We had our bayonets out and were supposed to look in the faces of the prisoners as we took them out of this world” (124). To Ishmael these people who killed his family are seen as toys, at this point in the story it’s hardly about revenge. Moreover, it’s about fulfillment, to him, saying that he kills them because they killed his family is a pathetic attempt to mask his true feelings, Ishmael is drugged and was addicted to both the sensation of killing and the drugs themselves. Another additional way the reader could Ishmael’s changes is when he talks about an experience where he tortured a group of people for a day straight who shot him and then shot them. Ishmael recounts, “Before I shot each man, I looked up and saw his eyes give up hope and steadied before I pulled the trigger. I found their somber eyes irritating” (159). Ishmael here is reflecting on his mentality here, he wasn’t steadying his aim because he felt empathetic or nervous to shoot the men, he was simply disgusted by the weakness in their eyes. Additionally, this alludes to the

But, this character development was hinted at throughout the story, through the horror and fighting, the reader has been able to see that he is human. The first example of this is later in the book when Ishmael sees the true horror of war and is stunned. Ishmael describes, “I lay there with my gun pointed in front of me, unable to shoot. My index finger had become numb. The forest had begun to spin. I felt as if the ground had turned upside down and I was going to fall off, so I clutched the base of a tree with one hand. I couldn’t think, but I could hear the sounds of the guns far away in the distance and the cries of people dying in pain. I had begun to fall into some sort of nightmare” (117, 118). This serves as a perfect example of Ishmael proving he can still be human because he isn’t numb to war, he has emotion even though he has described himself as a killing machine we can still see he has emotion. To add onto that, we see Ishmael is affected by the sounds of people dying, and before it was hinted that he was unaffected or didn't care, but here is proof that he does. A second way we see that Ishmael will always be human is when he accepts Esther as his sister and is happy with the connection. Ishmael reminisces, “That afternoon, as Esther walked away from where I sat on the rock, she continually turned around to wave at me,