Some people have lived the best of lives - they’ve never had to worry where they’re going to sleep, what they’re going to eat or they have never had to wonder if there really is good in this world. Instead, they live in warm secure homes with their family and friends. But some people only dream of that kind of life, some were born into the darkness and were never able to find their way out. Some were born in the light but fall into the darkness and never returned to the light. This falling does not happen right away - it takes time. It also takes horror, despair and insecurity for someone, no matter how pure or caring heart they may have, to fall into the depths of darkness. In the book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael’s moment of falling is when he witnessed his friends dying in battle.
There were more than dozen events that changed Ishmael, but three of them lead him down the path that few have returned completely unscratched. Events like losing his family, friends, home and heart. These losses are a lot of change to go through at one time for a 12 year old boy. Those life changing events started the slow change in Ishmael that turned him from a happy, energetic 12 year old boy to a cold blooded killer.
The first event that triggered the change of Ishmael’s entire being was the loss of his brother Junior. Junior was the only piece of his family that he knew was still alive, “It was during that attack in the village of Kamator that my friends and I separated. It was the last time I saw Junior, my older brother,” (Beah 43). Without Junior there to support Ishmael, the feelings of sadness and despair that was being held back let lose. Ishmael didn’t know where he would go or how he would survive, especially when all he’s ever known and loved was gone. Ishmael had become used to have Junior there with him, but then in one moment Junior was gone. The only piece of his family he had left was gone and he was most likely never to see again. Again a lot of change happened to Ishmael, one minute he has his brother and his friends and the next they are gone from his life.
The second event that lead Ishmael down the wrong path was the death of his friend Saidu. Saidu’s death was yet another huge change for Ishmael because he had final found a group of people that he knows and were around his age to travel with when tragedy strikes again. Saidu had become like family to Ishmael and all the others in their traveling group. It was also another loss for Ishmael to bear. The loss of his real family and now a loss in his new family in a short amount of time is not something one gets over quickly. But the events had already taken their toll, “Kanei began to cry on the man’s shoulder. It was then that we admitted that Saidu had left us. Everyone else was crying, but I couldn’t cry. I felt dizzy and my eyes watered. My hands began shaking again. I felt the warmth inside my stomach, and my heart was heart was beating slowly but at a heavy rate,” (Beah 85). His body wants to react and show his sadness but all the change that has happened has harden his heart. So his reactions are lessened, soon it’ll be to the point where a loss like this won’t affect him.
The third and final event that changed Ishmael was when he was so close to seeing his family but came a few minutes to late. In these few minutes that Ishmael’s group had spent talking to Gasemu Ishmael’s chance was lost, “If we hadn’t stopped to rest on the hill, if we hadn’t run into Gasemu, I would have seen my family, I thought. My head was burning as if it was on fire. I put my hands on both ears and squeezed in vain. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I got up, walked behind Gasemu, and locked his neck under my arms. I squeezed him as hard as I could, ‘I can’t breathe,’ he said, fighting back. He pushed me off and I fell next to a pestle. I picked it up and hit Gasemu with it. He fell and when he got up his nose was bleeding. My friends held me back. Gasemu looked at me and said sadly ‘I didn’t know this would happen,” (Beah 95 – 96). Ishmael might not have known what was happening to him but it’s clear to see that his path has been set. His heart is now full of darkness, he is blaming others and acts violently because of that blame. His childhood is no longer; he is a man, full of despair, in a child’s body. That despair will continue to eat him from the inside out until that final moment where he falls. In order to fall into the darkness one must go through tremendous amount of change, sadness, terror, and uncertainty.
The final moment where Ishmael falls is when he watched his friend, Josiah, die and then saw his friend’s Musa died body. Musa was known in Ishmael’s group of friends as the “story teller,” the one who always put a smile on others faces. Josiah was a tent-mate of Ishmael. He looked up to Ishmael more than he looked up to the corporal. Ishmael treated him and Sheku, their other tent-mate, like they were his little brothers because compared to him they were small, “Josiah and Sheku dragged the tip of their guns, as they weren’t strong enough to carry them and the guns were taller than them,” (Beah 116). Ishmael had been leaning the edge of a cliff, and in that moment Ishmael fell and fell hard, “I crawled to Josiah and looked into his eyes. There were tears in them and his lips were shaking, but he could not speak. As I watched him, the water in his eyes were replaced with blood that quickly turned his brown eyes into red. He reached for my shoulder as if he wanted to hold it and pull himself up. But midway, he stopped moving. The gunshots faded in my head, and it was as if my heart had stopped and the whole world had come to a standstill…….As I looked to where he lay, my eyes caught Musa, whose head was covered with blood. His hands looked too related….. My face, my hands, my shirt, and gun were covered in blood. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man….. Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two young lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed my people. I shot everyone that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed another strategy,” (Beah 118 – 119). In that moment; all of his loses, all the pain and horror that Ishmael had seen or felt were forgotten. They were forgotten because he no longer cared. He was no longer a child; he was now a child soldier.
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