Sumarry of a long way gone?

The memoir details the life of Ishmael Beah as he witnesses his family torn apart, death and destruction around him, and his life changed to that of a soldier.

All throughout the book people died by making erroneous choices or just trying to survive. It proved that when one least expects violence, it surfaces. Mogbwemo was attacked by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a man driving a Volkswagen pulled up to Junior and Ishmael's grandmother's house. He got out, vomited blood, cried, went to the door and pulled it open exposing four blood soaked bodies: two girls, one boy, and a woman. The woman had blood coming out of her ears. The inside of the van was painted red with their blood all because they tried to run from the RUF (12).

Throughout this novel families were torn apart and killed in front of one another. The idea of family also helped keep people alive. For example, the man who was carrying his dead son in his arms kept saying, "I'll get you to the hospital my son and you will be alright." He didn't want to give up to the fact his son was dead so he kept going. His running to save his dead son helped the man survive (13).

Ishmael sacrifices his childhood when he is cut from his family. Therefore, Ishmael runs for his life starving, and is forced to join the army where he does drugs, kills people, and lives to rip families apart like he was. Eventually, he is removed from the army and given an opportunity to be a child once more, but he doesn't want it. His innocence is lost. All he now knows is killing and drugs. Ishmael is forced into the rehabilitation center until he is capable of being an ordinary teenager. His life is normal for sometime as he goes to America to converse about war, but he comes back to find belligerence in his town once again and is thrust out of his life that was rejuvenating.

In the end, Ishmael reminisces about the time when he was asked to answer the fable in his village, and though he never discussed it with anyone came up with a solution. He thought, "If I was the hunter I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament." He was seven years old and came up with the most reasonable answer to the violence around him. His innocence was already leaving him and all throughout the book it was taken away more and more until, like his family, it was gone.