Destruction of Humanity - Child Soldiers

This is a new post based on one of the ideas we came up with in the last class. This interview and subsequent blog entry pushes the medium of the blog because it allows the reader to see the humanity in Beah’s eyes and the emotion in his voice before reading my analysis. We can see Beah’s youth, and it makes the reality of his experiences even more shocking. The transcript of the interview or an excerpt of the novel would not have had nearly the same effect.

Ishmael Beah Interview

This CBS interview with Ishmael Beah describes his experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone and his motivation for writing the New York Times bestseller, A Long Way Gone. In the interview, he describes that his participation in the war “destroyed his humanity” and resulted in a “loss of self”. Beah was forced into the army when he was only fourteen years old, the age that we were as freshman in high school. Though I know that we felt powerful, mature, and even a bit “cool” as we entered high school, I doubt I would have felt capable of yielding a gun and taking the lives of others. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone, however, had to do just that. Even more disconcerting, the child soldiers became attached to the power of wrecking havoc on those that had done the same to them and their families. The army supplied drugs – further entrapping Beah and his fellow child soldiers into the violent and dehumanizing military lifestyle.

Beah writes his memoir in order to describe how humanity can be regained. The process is by no means simple; in fact, Beah describes days where he saw blood pouring out of showers and water taps. However, Beah seeks that readers understand that the process is not impossible. All that it requires is for someone, to remind the boy soldiers that they are still children - to look at them, not as murderers and insurgents that they might have been, but instead as the children that they are.

Three Questions I would have liked to ask:
1.) When the process of rehabilitation became difficult, what made you continue?
2.) The army gradually became your family and you state that you were addicted to the power and the drugs. So what were your feelings when UNICEF came to rescue the child soldiers? Were you at all disappointed to be leaving the lifestyle that you had become accustomed to, and if so, what made you come to the realization that it was for the better?
3.) What did you hope to accomplish by writing this novel? Do you feel that you have been successful in achieving this goal?