Chad Nykiel (FGCU): “A Long Way Gone”

For our freshmen summer we had to read the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.  I found this book interesting because it was basically Ishmael’s personal story of his struggle through life.  I thought about the book and how it relates to society and this is what I came up with. 

No society can exist without trust.  In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmael explains how every stranger turned into an enemy.  This is a simple description of lack of trust.  Trust is a key feature for any society to cooperate and sustain a welcoming environment.  When trust is gone every face becomes an enemy and every action is done out of spite.  After losing such a basic factor of any common relationship a society crumbles and loses its sense of civilization.   Ishmael proves this through Sierra Leone’s rebel outlook on his friends and himself. 

          Ishmael gives examples of how his society turned their backs on his friends and him whenever he traveled to another village.  When Ishmael was dragged into the war little did he know his life was about to change forever.  After his first real war experience he realized his life was always on the line.  He started to trust no one and look at every person as if they were armed and going to kill him.  While in the army he had his crew and that was it.  If you were not wearing one of their bandannas then you were most likely already dead.  At one of the villages where Ishmael was caught they were taken to the chief.  Had it not been for one of their friends that lived in the village, Ishmael’s friends and himself would have been dead.  That village was only looking to protect themselves.  They heard that there were boys going around and killing entire villages.  The only logic the village had was to not trust anyone.  Luckily Ishmael knew someone that lived there and their lives were spared.  At the village where they met the Good Samaritan fisherman they were also captured.  They were stripped of their clothes and held at gunpoint.  This village also fell victim to losing trust in innocent children.  Then the chief found Ishmael’s cassette tapes and Ishmael proved that they were just kids trying to escape the violence they had been forced to join.  This all proves that without trust nothing can be accomplished and no one can live a normal life.

In Sierra Leone there is no such thing as a normal life.  All families have heard of the war and over half have seen what it can do to people.  The war makes people lose trust in everyone.  After such a terrible thing happens to people and they are directly involved in the war they lose a sense of reality.  They learn that they must do whatever needs to be done in order to protect themselves and their families.  When an individual loses trust in others they normally stay away from society until they can regain that trust back.  If a society loses trust everyone starts to panic.  Through a stage of panic, violence spreads across the country.  This violence leads people to trust no one and they then only look out for themselves.  In Sierra Leone if they do not watch out for their own lives then they will be dead before they realize it.  Civilization will no longer exist after all this occurs and live as it seems will be as simple as guarding your own grave.

          Throughout the book Ishmael’s friends along with himself were almost always looked at as if they were rebels.  No one trusted anyone for any reason.  When a society becomes like this they lose a sense of hope.  That hope is that their country will one day regain trust and become a better nation.  Without that trust they also lose communication.   Communication is key and without it they are no longer a society but they become nothing.  They are now just a group of enemies all living within certain boundaries.

Work Cited

Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone : Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Sarah

     Crichton Books, 2007.

This entry was posted on 14. April 2009 at 01:00 and is filed under Introduction to Sociology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.