Only through the constant efforts of Esther, a UNICEF nurse, to treat him as a human being, not a monster, is Beah able to reconnect with his emotional self and grieve the terrors he has both undergone and committed.īeah is sent to live with his Uncle Tommy and his family in Freetown - then unaffected by the war. At first, Beah cannot reconcile himself to the seemingly weak ways of the foreign UNICEF workers and the locals who interact with him at the UNICEF camp.

UNICEF intervenes, taking some of the more 'promising' boys away from their life of military violence. Beah becomes desensitized to his situation, living each day in a haze of drug-induced apathy and regimented bloodlust. He and his unit commit the same atrocities that the RUF had perpetrated upon Beah's own village and neighboring towns. As part of their conditioning, the boys are given drugs (cocaine and marijuana), fed a steady diet of American action films (such as Rambo: First Blood), and rewarded for finding the most efficient way to kill an enemy.įor nearly three years, Beah becomes the very thing that appalled him before: a bloodthirsty, heartless killer. He is taken to a government camp and treated well at first however, it becomes clear that the government is facing too strong an opposition in the RUF and must now recruit boys into its army. Now deprived of hope that his family will ever be whole again, Beah is ripe for indoctrination into the government military structure. He reunites with his previous companions only to discover that the village he believed the rest of his family to have taken refuge in has already been hit by the RUF and utterly destroyed. Alone, Beah comes to grips with dangers both physical (snakes, wild boars, food supply) and psychological (isolation and fear). Even at this point, the RUF attacks have turned Beah from child to young adult whose priorities have shifted from a love of rap music to a need to survive through each day's difficulties.īeah and his companions run into the rebels and are separated from one another.

Beah, his brother Junior, and his friends form a small party of survivors seeking to return to the peace they had once known. He spends the first few chapters of the book attempting to find his way home but when he learns 'home' has been wiped out, he seeks information about his family's well-being.

From that moment, chaos envelops Beah's life as he seeks news of his family and survival for himself and his companions.Įarly in the RUF assaults, Beah learns of the rebels' horrific actions mostly through hearsay and rumor. A twist of fate leads Beah (along with his older brother and two friends) to leave their home village to practice for a talent competition in a nearby town on the eve of an attack by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) on his home village of Mogbwemo. A Long Way Gone begins in Ishmael Beah's early youth in 1993.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah