Gunshots reverberate in the previously muted dusk. Soldiers rush out from under their threadbare blankets to greet their brutal fate. Boys of different ages, statures, and environments remain united by the war which rages behind their languid eyelids. Some are forced to fight against their imminent demise. Others cannot endure the sweltering heat of combat. However, all crave the white powder that, for a second, chases away their bitter thoughts. 

    Corpses lay dispersed while children witness their comrades, their dear friends, descend onto the blood-soaked earth. All is silent at the front. Even the creatures which lurked in the woods paused to pay reverence to the country's fallen sons. It was at that moment that the soldiers accepted the unrelenting reality. The battle would be nevermore conquered, for what, of your recollections, can you truly overcome? 

    As one of the rare individuals who, tragically, endured the events which occurred in Sierra Leone, Ishmael Beah steers his readers through a heartbreaking rollercoaster of sentiments within his gripping memoir, A Long Way Gone. In 2007, his best-seller was nominated for a Quill Award, which was established "to inspire reading while promoting literacy." 

    Since the release of his first novel, he was designated by The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) as their primary advocate for Children Affected by War. When accepting his position, he declared, “… for me it’s just a way to give me more strength to continue... to make sure that what happened to me doesn’t continue to happen to other children around the world.” His startling account regarding the strife in his homeland allowed him to bestow his message upon society as warranted.

   At the tender age of twelve, he was swept up into the currents of war. An innocuous boy who knew of bloodshed solely from films, he and his friends sang and stepped in time with the rhythm of their cassette tapes, which contained their favored rap and hip hop tunes. Their family members vanished into the dense, sweat-inducing night air when rebels infiltrated their tranquil village of Mogbwemo. Homes torched, women violated, and lives devastated as men bearing rifles ripped apart anything that traveled onto their path. Their security compromised, Ishmael and his companions wandered from community to community in search of harmony. During the harrowing adventure, the faithful collection of boys found themselves separated following a vicious village raid. Painfully, he comments on that night, "It was the last time I saw Junior, my older brother." (Beah, 43).

    Even though he longed to find his brother, he continued, disheartened. Wandering alone in the woods, it was over a month before he was once again embracing the resentful features of civilization. Friends who had grown obscure since primary school were greeted with open arms, and the newly emerged clan uncovered news of their family's whereabouts. However, he had "a feeling that something bad was going to happen." (Beah, 84). To his horror, the residence his parents had been resting in was incinerated; his family shattered. The boys decided to seek asylum inside the pleasant village of Yele. However, the war was sneaking in on them. Two choices were presented, and only one was accepted. Ishmael begins his era as a child soldier. 

    Seasons were spent amidst gunpowder, one-minute meals, and drugs. Slaughter, which was formerly taboo, shifted to a regular occurrence in his life. After a brutal massacre of a serene village, he announced: "I felt no pity for anyone." (Beah, 126). Two years following their initial admission into the war, their dour lieutenant selected several boys to leave their ranks. Benin Home was not a pleasant environment for malice-conformed juvenile soldiers. His time was distributed through undesired therapy sessions, dinner glasses shattering against the cool, tiled floors, and repeated reassurances of "It's not your fault." Only after he understood that his guilt was unnecessary did he truly accept who he was. 

    He was a child who survived throughout a war. A soldier who executed corrupt judgments yet was capable of becoming rehabilitated. A boy, who was starved of joy for so long, found it among the bright lights of New York City. An orphan who unearthed a home with an amiable woman named Laura, who he was introduced to at a conference regarding child soldiers. He was Ishmael Beah, and that meant everything.

    Finding and accepting yourself was one of the several major themes in this novel. Ishmael conveyed how he changed over the years by beginning his book with an introduction, where he is ten years old, and not when he was fifteen and a vicious soldier. In the last line of his first paragraph, he states "My imagination at ten years old did not have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the refugees." He once was an inexperienced child whose sole concern was completing school with flying colors. After the war, he was mentally damaged but was capable of rediscovering who he was within Benin Home. There, he discovered forgiveness and, stubbornly, learned how to wholly accept himself. Although he suffered a long and challenging journey to find himself, accepting who he had become required a greater amount of effort. In my opinion, this theme fits and strengthens the narrative as a whole. To a boy who developed into a brutal soldier, finding yourself would be a major element of his story. The development of this theme was easily conveyed through his use of symbolism.

     The crapes (shoes) he donned several times throughout the novel symbolized who he was and, consequently, how much he changed. The use of symbolism throughout the novel added another layer of depth that I enjoyed watching out for. While reading the text, I would look for the sentences that informed me of how his crapes were faring, or if he possessed any at all. At the beginning of the novel, he owned stylish, clean shoes, which he intended to wear to his musical performance. The period when he owns these stainless crapes is representing his adolescent innocence. That same pair of shoes donned a more tattered cloak following the demanding situations that shaped his perilous quest to locate his family. 

     With the wearing down of his shoes, Ishmael is symbolically evolving into a new self. Gone is the innocent and pure boy who once had fresh shoes. Subsequently, his footwear is taken by a chief who needed the boys to learn a brutal lesson. Their bare soles burned against the bitter caress of the blazing sand. When his crapes were stolen, Ishmael's youth became figuratively lost forever. The loss of something, which signified himself on a smaller scale, anticipated only harm to follow. Once he enters the war, he is gifted with "a black Reebok Pump and was happier about my new crapes than anything else that was going on" (Beah, 110), thus beginning his new life as a soldier. The entire evolution of his shoes was an excellent addition, and I am glad it was incorporated into his work.

     The tone of his writing held a naive quality to it -- he needed readers to recognize the reality of his horrific childhood. This innocence and simplicity of his work resulted in a straightforward text. Such as when he says, " We arrived in the village with nightfall and sat against the walls of the army house." (Beah, 120). His text is direct; however, this reduced reading level does not take away the impression that the story has upon its avid readers. When delivering his account to society, his work did not require a complex structure to gain readers and dramatically impact their lives. Writing in such a lower reading level once again embeds the harsh reality into the reader's mind, in which he was only a small child during the time he was forced to kill.

     The people who would appreciate this book the most are teenagers wishing to become more informed on the differences between children worldwide. Some may simply see this book and brush it away; however, there are a meager few who will use the information provided and better our world as a whole. That is Ishmael Beah's single intention -- to educate others on the appalling conditions he was forced to endure as a child, and to prevent future reoccurrences. The term child soldier can be interpreted in many ways, but the textbook definition of children in the war is "ones who are associated with military organizations, such as state armed forces and non-state armed groups." Ishmael elaborated on this one sentence and constructed his entire college thesis around it. Not with facts, but with true accounts from his own life to help teach others about the appalling events which occurred in his country. To him, this dry definition is his unrelenting reality, and he presents it vividly inside his memoir, A Long Way Gone.