86 pages • 2 hours read
Ishmael BeahA Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Ear of Corn
Ishmael and his companions find themselves close to starvation after several days of wandering in the forest. They decide to risk returning to Mattru Jong, the village from which they escaped during a rebel attack to retrieve some cash Ishmael left behind. They make the long trek back and then walk a long distance to another village where vendors sell traditional local food in the street. Upon their arrival, they are devastated to see that the food sellers are no longer in operation; the danger they risked in getting the cash was futile, and they are so hungry that they are weak and squabbling with one another. One evening, they see a five-year-old boy eating two boiled ears of corn. Without preliminary discussion, the starving group rushes at the child and steals the corn from him. Later, the boy’s mother, realizing that the action was motivated by extreme hunger, gives each of them an ear of corn to eat.
Ishmael has a temporary sense of guilt, but he feels that his survival was at stake and there was no other recourse. The corn may be thought to illustrate the desperate measures to which the children are forced to resort in their effort to survive. Not only that, it represents the generosity of individuals like the boy’s mother amid periods of national turmoil.
Nightmares
The author introduces the topic of nightmares early in his narrative by describing a hideous dream wherein he wheels a dead body to a cemetery. He passes other bodies that are horribly wounded and bleeding. As he unwraps the cloth from the corpse, he sees that the Adam’s apple has been demolished and that the body is his own.
Elsewhere, nightmares figure heavily into the narrative. When Ishmael is offered the opportunity to leave the Benin rehabilitation center to live with his Uncle Tommy’s family, he worries that he may have a violent dream and terrify the other members of the household. In another dream that Ishmael experiences at the Benin center, he is surrounded by men who shoot each other but rise to fight again. Their blood fills the room and he is anguished by their cries. His mother and father appear and try to smile and talk to him. When he tries to follow them into the house, it disappears. In a nuance that may be a harbinger of his psychological recovery, Ishmael dreams that his own body bleeds from the wounds sustained by the victims in this scenario and that he can feel their pain.
Rap Cassette Tapes
The narrator and his companions are huge fans of American rap music. His conception of New York City is entirely predicated on rap lyrics, and upon his visit, he is surprised to find that the urban center functions in a safe and civilized manner.
Moreover, rap music is the boys’ salvation. The reason that they survive the rebel attack on their home village is that they travelled to a nearby area to participate in a local talent show by singing and dancing to rap music.
When Ishmael is pressed into military service, he still possesses some of his self-recorded rap tapes. He keeps them hidden in the pocket of his shorts. As the boy changes into his military issued pants, a zealous soldier grabs the author’s old shorts and throws them into the fire. The tapes melt before he can retrieve them, representing the last tangible tie that Ishmael had to his beloved brother, his close friends, and his previous way of life.
Nessie
The author recalls his grandfather as a learned Arabic scholar and herbalist. When he and Junior visit, their grandfather would mix a special potion intended to enhance brain functioning and the ability to retain knowledge. The process was long and complex: the older man would write an Arabic prayer on a slate with ink made from a medicinal plant. When the writing was washed off the slate, the leftover water, “Nessie,” was saved and siphoned into a bottle. The boys were advised to keep this a secret and drink it prior to taking exams. Ishmael writes that he developed a permanently retentive memory and that he could visualize his notes and written material from his texts while taking tests. Ironically, this photographic memory makes it extraordinarily difficult for Ishmael to forget the horrors of the civil war.
Brown brown
The Sierra Leonean military forces depend heavily on the services of young boys coerced into joining the fight. To keep the ill-equipped, poorly fed troops alert and ready to fight, the commanding officers provide a constant supply of drugs, including methamphetamines and marijuana. The author recalls being unable to sleep for over a week after his first experience with ingesting these substances.
Another drug used frequently is referred to as “brown brown.” This is a highly addictive mix of cocaine and gunpowder that is snorted daily by the troops. It produces unnatural bursts of energy and aggression as well as a permanent sort of insomnia. When the boys selected to be rehabilitated are admitted to the Benin Home, they spend the first several months of their stay undergoing withdrawal from this highly addictive potpourri of drugs.
