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Summary: Chapter 1
In 1993, Sierra Leone’s civil war has been going on for two years. Twelve-year-old Ishmael Beah and his older brother, Junior, live in a town called Mogbwemo. The boys’ stepmother keeps them from seeing their father very often. The boys’ biological mother lives in a nearby town with their younger brother. The boys and a friend, Talloi, have a rap and dance act. They have entered a talent contest in Mattru Jong, sixteen miles away. Ishmael and Junior once attended school there but now cannot afford school. Traveling to the contest on foot, the three boys stop in Kabati for a visit with the brothers’ grandmother. In Mattru Jong, the boys meet up with three more friends, Gibrilla, Kaloko, and Khalilou, who are also part of the hip-hop group. The out-of-towners stay at Khalilou’s house.
The next day, news arrives that Mogbwemo has been seized by rebel troops. Ishmael, Junior, and Talloi head back to Mogbwemo to find their families. They get as far as Kabati, where they find the grandmother’s house is deserted. Waiting on her veranda, the boys see a blood-smeared van driven by a badly injured driver whose family lies dead in back of the van. The boys see a woman carrying her dead daughter on her back. The girl’s body had stopped the bullets from hitting the mother. The boys return to Mattru Jong where Ishmael has nightmares. The six boys pass the time listening to rap music. They agree that the current madness will only last a few months. Ishmael thinks back to his childhood, when he would look for different images in the shadows of the moon’s surface.
Summary: Chapter 2
Years later, living in New York City, Ishmael has nightmares about his life as a child soldier. He dreams of transporting a bullet-riddled body to a cemetery, only to discover that the body is his own. Waking in a sweat, he hears rap music outside his apartment and thinks back to a time when his squad, mostly boys and a few adults, fought another squad, also consisting mostly of boys. When the battle was over, Ishmael’s squad sat on the enemies’ bodies and ate their food. Ishmael reflects that today, he lives in three worlds: his dreams, his new life in the present, and the memories his new life sometimes triggers.
Analysis: Chapters 1–2
Ishmael Beah’s memoir opens with foreshadowing of the horror to come when refugees of war travel through his hometown of Mogbwemo. The immediacy of the death and destruction, malnourished children and adults, and people showing signs of physical and mental damage warns of Ishmael’s coming struggles. In contrast, twelve-year-old Ishmael describes the everyday concerns of childhood that he was preoccupied with at the time: rap music, dancing, a talent show, and fashionable clothing. References to the songs “Rappers Delight” by Sugarhill Gang and “I Know You Got Soul” by Eric B. & Rakim situate the story in the early 1990s, which was a tumultuous time in Ishmael’s home country of Sierra Leone. This also helps foreshadow the terrible situations Ishmael will experience in his personal narrative. By the end of the first chapter, Ishmael’s focus will have shifted far from rap music and talent shows.
When Ishmael hears the news about his hometown’s capture by rebels while visiting nearby Mattru Jong, he thinks of his parents, grandparents, and brothers, setting up a strong family motif that will recur throughout the book. The boys are compelled to go home to Mogbwemo despite the news that it has been captured. Even seeing people fleeing the rebels, carrying the bodies of family members, does not deter the boys in their mission to make it back home. And though they can’t make it back to Mogbwemo, the attempt is symbolic of the love they have for their families. Listening to rap music back in Mattru Jong is a way to soothe their nerves and recall happier times, but the boys struggle to keep their worry at bay. Ishmael recalls something he learned from his family, that “we must strive to be like the moon.” The moon has been a comforting symbol for Ishmael in his life to this point and will appear throughout the book to symbolize happy childhood memories with family held close.
Chapter 2 jumps forward in time to develop Ishmael’s character by contrasting his childhood innocence with nightmares that haunt him many years later as an adult. Now living in New York City, Ishmael cannot help but recall some of the atrocious acts of war that he has committed, signaling that the innocent boy described in Chapter 1 will undergo a radical change. That innocent Ishmael had reported that his “entire body froze” at the sight of dead bodies, and the images of what he has seen plague his mind. But Ishmael’s violent dreams and memories as an adult tell of a different boy, one that kills other boys and is numb to the horrors of war and his own participation in heinous acts. Ishmael’s character is developed in a non-linear fashion by jumping ahead in time, and his innocence at the start of the narrative is set in stark contrast to the vivid dreams and memories Ishmael can’t shake as an adult. Despite the innocence of his early childhood, Ishmael will be transformed into a child soldier by the impossible circumstances he faces in Sierra Leone.
