Ishmael Beah Analysis

Words: 281
Pages: 2

Ishmael Beah conveys the theme of power which often creates a hierarchy changing one’s relationship with others. In the memoir of Beah, he and his other friends has been transferred to a rehabilitation center after being children soldiers for two years in a war in Sierra Leone consisting of the Sierra Leone Army and RUF, the Revolutionary United Front, other known as rebels. The boy’s recovery took some time with incidences “where we began to fight” and terrorized the staff by chasing “them out of the dining hall and beat them up.” This was normal behavior for the child soldiers and “we wanted ‘the civilians,’ as we referred to staff members, to respect us as soldiers who were capable of severely harming them.” Ishmael and his fellow child