Literary Analysis Essay on A long way gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier

Introduction

Change is something that happens each minute of one's life. It does not matter whether it is environmental, physical, social, intellectual or emotional change. The most important thing is how the person will adjust the changes to be favorable to him and avoid being controlled by the changes. It is evident that all through Ishmael Beah's a Long Way Gone book, the theme of change portrayed itself in many different forms and scenarios as discussed below;

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"I, go to the town of Mattru Jong, to participate in our friends' talent show. Mohamed, my best friend, couldn't come because he and his father were renovating their thatched-roof kitchen that day. The four of us had started a rap and dance group when I was eight. We were first introduced to rap music during one of our visits to Mobimbi; a quarter were the foreigners who worked for the same American company as my father lived" (Beah 17). The passage tells us how Beah walked from his home village to Mattru Jong from friends' talent show.

Therefore, from the passage, Beah was seen to be moving from one village to the other with different causes and motives. The primary purpose of the movement was to attend friends' talent show as well as swimming (Beah 17). Therefore, the theme of change in this context is based on geographical moves that he made from his home village to Mattru Jong. Also, there is a physical change that can be identified from that scenario of renovating the thatched-roof kitchen.

"Every morning in Mattru Jong we would go down to the wharf for the news from home. But after a week the stream of refugees from that direction ceased and news dried up. Government troops were deployed in Mattru Jong, and they erected checkpoints at the wharf and other strategic locations all over town. The soldiers were convinced that if the rebels attacked, they would come from across the river, so they mounted heavy artillery there and announced a 7:00 p.m. curfew, which made the nights tense, as we couldn't sleep and had to be inside too early. During the day, Gibrilla and Kaloko came over. The six us sat on the verandah and discussed what was going on" (Beah 27). The passage was all about who the soldiers were ready for an attack because they had done sufficient preparation and even identified the loophole was attacker were expected to follow.

From the passage, there is the physical change that can be identified that is the news which used to be more had dried up and also, the stream of refugees that followed the designated direction has declined. Therefore, the theme of change is revealed in the form of quantitative difference (Beah 27). Also, it was clear that there was the emotional change that resulted from the expected attack which caused the people to be tensed and filled with a lot of fear.

"We slept in the abandoned village, where we lay on the bare ground and hope that the following day, we would be able to find something other than raw cassava to eat. We had passed through a village that had the banana, orange, and coconut trees. Khalilou, who knew how to climb better than all of us, mounted each of those trees and plucked as much from them as he could. The banana was raw, so we boiled them by adding wood to the fire that was in on the outdoor kitchens. Someone must have left that village when he or she saw us coming because the fire was new. The banana didn't taste good at all, because there was no salt or any ingredients, but we ate every single bit, to have something in our stomachs" (Beah 40). The passage talked about how these friends were hungry to the extent of eating boiled bananas without salt.

Therefore, it is clear from the above passage that the theme of change is well-used and change is portrayed by the difference in the form of bananas after being cooked (Beah 40).

Work Cited

Beah, Ishmael. A long way gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier. Sarah Crichton Books, 2007.