A Long Way Gone #4

In this part of the novel, Ishmael is sent to a rehabilitation center. This part of the novel is almost similar to the book that I read for last semester, A Million Little Pieces. The themse are the same but they are recovering from different things. Ishmael desperately needs to talk to someone about his problems so that they could properly address his symptoms. Beah finds comfort in a girl who works in the medical area. Beah is still hardened from the war and he has a hard time opening up to people. In his mind, his squad is his family. They find ways for Beah to behave. They calm him down with music and they let him talk. This is when Beah makes the most progress. He is given the opportunity to perform for his center. Performing dances and hip hop songs has been part of Beah’s childhood forever. He really turns his life around. He found ways to keep himself busy. “Memorizing lyrics left me little time to think about what had happened in the war” (Beah 163). He is still haunted by the war, but he now remembers his family and what they meant to him. The rehabilition center looks for much of his family in the city.

This part of the novel had a lot of themes that related to the rehab process. The way that Beah found comfort in other people ultimately led to his fast recovery. He knew that he had to hang on to what little connections he had and use it to keep him strong. Just as James Frey had Lilly to look forward to, Ishmael Beah had Esther. He really began to himself recovering. This also has a lot to do with my topic of juvenile justice. It almost perfectly relates. This was a boy who was a crazy war criminal. He did things that even the worse teenagers in the country could not imagine. However, they were still able to get through to his mind and they found ways to relate. If one of the poorest countries in the world can rehabilitate juvenile war criminals than so can we.