A Long Way Gone By Ishmael

The impact of war can be hard. Ishmael in the story A long way gone by is forced to be a child soldier because of the death of his family. Ishmael in this story goes to lots of challenges the biggest one is keeping his own life. He also faces a lot of death in the book. Some being the deaths of his friends and his family but also when he was a child soldier he saw people next to him die and the people on the opposing side which is the rebels as well. This story does a good job of giving a good example of good and bad situations that can happen in ones life. Ishmael is a victim and a victimizer because he goes through many things such as killing people and drugs. Ishmael was a victim of war in many ways A major one being that Ishmael goes to the rehabilitation center he asked if anyone
He said, “anyone happened to bring so marijuana or cocaine” (Beah 132). This shows how Ishmael couldn’t function normally without drugs later in the book Ishmael stops thinking about drug and more about moving in with his uncle. But now on the flip side, Ismael is now suffering from a PTSD which is post stress disorder. These nightmares hunt him from when he gets taken to the rehabilitation center and for the rest of his life. But in the rehabilitation center, Ishmael suffers many nights because of this. “Nightmares sweating, screaming, and punching our own heads to drive out the images that continued to torment us” (Beah 148). This quote shows how Ishmael can’t sleep normally because of the drugs and the mainly the nightmares.Ishmael shows how he is a victimizer by causing a lot of trouble in the first few days at the center. Ishmael meets other government child soldiers and gets into a fight with them but later join them when they discover there are rebel soldiers that lived near them. They start talking badly for each other