Final Thoughts on A Long Way Gone

Author Ishmael Beah

So, after we finish the memoir unit, I left A Long Way Gone untouched for about a week. Then, as I lay awake in bed on Thursday night, I realized that I still had some of the book left to read. I finished the book and here are my thoughts on it.

Best Part of the Book - Description of Life-Threatening Scenarios: Now, this may sound a bit strange, but the way Ishmael yeah, the author narrates his story is phenomenal. He talks about his first time out fighting with the army. I think that the reason he can especially remember these fights was that it was the first time in his life that he actually was not just the witness, and also because he speaks about doing large amounts of drugs like cocaine before every outing. Beah writes "We walked for long hours snd stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with agri, sniff cocaine, brown-brown [cocaine mixed with gunpowder] and take some brown capsules. the combination of these drugs gave us a lot of energy and made us fierce." 

Worst Part of the Book: There really isn't a name for what I hate about this book, and that is that the main point of this book, the point that he was a child soldier for the Sierra Leonese government, is that he doesn't get to that part of his story until the second half of the book. The first half of the book is just about he gets into the situation of being a soldier. And that first half is pretty boring, there's little action, and it's mostly just about them walking around the countryside, hoping that they find something to call home.

So obviusly, this book had it's ups and downs, but it definitely had a large amount of shock factor, and it does a fantastic job at getting this message out about the use of child soldiers in times like this.