A Long Way Gone Part 3

After walking for days on end, the boys were picked up by a group of soldiers. Later on they started losing the battles to the rebels and inevitably had to join the rebels or be killed by them. In January of 1996, when Ishmael is 15 years old, UNICEF men arrive to take the boy soldiers from the war zone. Ishmael and his friends are lined up, and the lieutenant chooses the youngest ones to be released from their duty. He tells them that the UNICEF men will put them in schools and find them new lives.

Everything going on in this part seems to be about revenge. They use revenge as a tool, or as an excuse for doing something they shouldn’t. The boys’ motivation to join the army is survival, but the theme of revenge is present as well. The boys are brainwashed into believing that, by soldiering, they can take revenge on the men who killed their families. When Josiah and Musa are killed in front of him, he finds a rage inside that forces him to fight and to kill. The brainwashing from the military is effective in motivating violence in Ishmael, but he also must have the drugs to remain numb enough to do his job and survive. Ishmael's innocence is completely gone. He writes that the combination of the drugs made him fierce and that killing had become "as easy as drinking water." His attitude toward violence now is one of numb acceptance. He seems almost to enjoy the task, in vast contrast to his earlier descriptions of his reaction to killing. Violence as entertainment is also a theme coming up in this part of the story, as Ishmael and the soldiers make little distinction between the Rambo movies they watch and the wars in which they fight.