A Long Way Gone Analysis Essay Example

“From Sierra Leone to Congo, from Afghanistan to Kosovo, child soldiers are the war weapon of choice, easily manipulated, intensely loyal, fearless, and most important, in endless supply.” (Thomas Reuters Foundation). Child soldiers are faced with many struggles which the reader is shown. Beah uses personification and imagery to inform his readers about the hardships and loneliness of young soldiers in A Long Way Gone.

Hardships and loneliness of young soldiers are displayed by imagery. Child soldiers are usually filled with many hardships throughout their time, seeing things that can destroy them such as death, which the reader is shown when Beah says, “As I watched him, the water in his eyes was replaced with blood that quickly turned his brown eyes into red” (118). People usually aren’t accustomed to watching their friend die, unlike Beah, who can still give the reader a vivid image of what he saw. A child soldier is also forced to face loneliness, likely losing close friends or family, which he shows the reader by giving them a clear image of the pain he is feeling. “Every time I stopped shooting to change my magazines and saw my two young lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people.” (Beah 119) The imagery used in the quote proves his loneliness giving the reader a visual of the pain he is going through, remembering his now-dead friends. Beah and other child soldiers experience similar things, most are lonely and most have gone through tremendous hardships, which Beah informs the reader and gives the reader a better look with imagery. Besides using imagery, Beah displays the loneliness and hardships of a child soldier through personification. 

Personification helps inform the reader and assists them to understand the loneliness and hardships of child soldiers. The reader is shown this when the soldiers are killing the prisoners and Beah says, “I grabbed the man’s head and slit his throat in one fluid motion. His Adam’s apple made way for the sharp knife, and I turned the bayonet on its zigzag edges as I brought it out” (125). Beah uses personification to show how he connected that killing with ‘making way’, going back to when he ‘made way’ for the war when he joined. Beah lost many things including his family, making him lonely. Beah without the lovingness of family or friends shows his loneliness when he says, “I spent the night in the arms of those trees, between earth and sky” (50). Personification shows the reader how distraught Beah is to a point where a tree gives him the comfort he needs when thinking everything is lost. Spending the night in the arms of the trees would represent how he might have spent the night in the arms of his mother when he was sad or lonely. 

Beah shows the readers the hardships and loneliness he and child soldiers face through personification and imagery. Through this Beah can inform us about what he experienced through the war,  all of the pain and suffering, in hopes that he may have an impact on the reader to stand up against using child soldiers.