Chris Kilcourse blog

A Long Way Gone

Author: Ishmael Beah

I started reading A Long Way Gone just a couple of weeks ago. It did not take me long to realize that there is a huge conflict going on. Within the first couple of chapters, I could already tell what the conflict was going to be. A civil war breaks out in Sierra Leone which is what causes Ishmael Beah and his friends to go on the run to try and get back to their village. Ishmael and his friends have to worry about getting caught by soldiers which are called Rebels and also have hard times making it through some of the villages they travel through.

            The group of boys encounters different things during their journey like women hiding in bushes screaming their children's names, naked children, and Ishmael even sees cars packed with dead people covered in blood and the terror on everyone's faces as he passes. The different things these boys saw during their journey was horrifying and the way they had to live was even worse. Ishmael gave some insight to how they lived by saying, “We slept in abandoned villages, where we lay on the bare ground and hoped that the following day we would be able to find something other than raw cassava to eat” (Beah 26). The group of boys was also captured several different times, but luckily got let go every time. Even though each time they were scared for their lives not knowing whether or not they were going to live. I’m sure this conflict is not going to end anytime soon, so I’m really looking forward to how it gets solved.