James Coleman
Quotes/Journals
“We must strive to be like the moon”(16).
In this section, Beah is reminiscing of his childhood and is pondering the meaning behind this quote that he heard often as a child. His mother explained that people complain when it is too hot or too cold, but no one complains when the moon is shining. People each appreciate the moon in their own special way. This quote obviously stuck with Beah and proves that childhood can have a lasting impact on life.
I love this idea of being like the moon. I think that it leaves room for interpretation because each person will understand it differently. To me, being like the moon means being calm and unique. It means being a light in the darkness and being there when people need me. To Beah, I think it meant simply making people happy and being his own person. This quote is so simple and yet is so meaningful and wise. I wonder what our world would be like if more people tried to be like the moon?
“These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past”(20).
Beah is reminding his audience of his detachment from his own situation in this quote. He feels as though he is living in three different worlds and only one of them is his reality. His experiences trigger memories from the past because he is reminiscing of when life was simpler. When he still had a childhood and a normal life.
I think that many returned soldiers live with PTSD from their times on duty and they too live in “multiple worlds”. They live in one but cannot forget their experiences which they feel like happened in an alternate reality. They struggle trying to figure out how to live in both and how to cope with knowing that only one is truly real.
“People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy”(37).
This quote describes the atmosphere that a war creates. It creates animosity and fear and suddenly every stranger becomes an enemy and no one is trusting or friendly anymore. For Beah, his first experience with the war was when it was getting close to his village and he saw how it had changed the people who were fleeing from it. Then soon it changed the people around him as well. Finally, it changed him too. It made him more wary of people’s intentions and more sure that people were not worthy of trust.
I think it is sad that trials can change someone’s character so quickly. In the face of hardship, humans become selfish and wary of others intentions. I see this in war torn cultures and also it can arise from other situations such as abuse or bullying. When someone’s life or image is on the line, they will do whatever it takes to save it. Every stranger becomes a potential enemy.
“My mind had not only snapped during the first killing, it had also stopped making remorseful records, or so it seemed”(122).
At first, Beah discusses how he feels sickened and guilty for the heinous acts he was committing. But then he notices that his mind had snapped when he first killed and that soon it stopped keeping any record of wrongs. Killing became normal, which would have appalled Beah before, but now barely phases him through the cloud of drugs.
This absolutely sickens me to think that the mind of a child literally snapped. But, it explains how men have the capability of killing over and over and not feeling any remorse. If Beah is correct, after the first one, it gets easier and easier and affects the person less and less. This is horrendous because something so awful can become normal with time. It is still the act of taking a life, and that is something that should never be taken for granted.
“We are not like the rebels, those riffraffs who kill people for no reason. We kill them for the good and betterment of this country”(123).
This quote comes from the lieutenant of Beah’s squad. It shows how much worth children will put on something that a respected adult will say, no matter if it is right or wrong. At this point, the lieutenant is trying to justify the crew’s actions and is also making the rebels into lesser beings, which makes them easier to kill.
This reminds me of the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel because the Nazi’s convinced themselves that the Jews were less than themselves which therefore made them easier to kill. In addition, they were committing this awful deed, but for the greater good. There was a purpose. People can be convinced to do anything if there is a greater purpose and can be tricked into believing anything by an eloquent speaker.
“My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen”(126).
The experiences that Beah had undergone in the war hardened his heart and he soon realized that his childhood was gone. At this point, he has seen things that no adult should even have to see and that innocence can never be retrieved. Beah’s use of the word frozen also is very fitting because it relates to being hardened and also usually associated with a negative or hopeless tone.
The experiences of the war robbed Beah of his childhood and he was forced to grow up much too quickly. He committed heinous acts that most adults have never committed and is now forced to live with them. In addition, as he matures, he will probably become more and more aware of what he did and will have to cope with it for the rest of his life.
“My nickname was ‘Green Snake’, because I would situate myself in the most advantageous and sneaky position and would take out a whole village from under the tiniest shrub without being noticed”(144).
The nickname that Beah received only cemented him further into the group of soldiers. With a nickname comes familiarity and a sense of belonging which is something that all of the boys were searching for. The absence of their families and normal lives left them seeking acceptance elsewhere and this is something that the army counted on. This made the boys more vulnerable to persuasion and more willing to do anything to get that sense of security. Beah, like the other boys, took pride in his nickname and did everything he could to live up to the name and to impress his newfound friends.
Nicknames create a sense of acceptance which is something that all of the boy soldiers were looking for. Beah did everything he could to live up to his nickname and was so proud to receive it because it meant that others cared enough about him to notice qualities about his personality and give him a name based off of them. This same thing can be applied to high school and life in general. People like knowing that others care, we crave attention. A nickname is a form of acceptance that all people understand and appreciate.
“I would try desperately to think about my childhood, but I couldn’t. The war memories had formed a barrier that I had to break in order to think about any moment in my life before the war”(149).
This part of the story describes when Beah is dealing with his PTSD from the war. All he can remember are awful memories and nightmares from his time fighting and he cannot recall anything from before. The war left such a deep scar that his childhood seems as if it took place in a completely different lifetime and to a completely different person. In order to remember, he must first come to terms with the horrific memories and nightmares running through his brain and move on from them.
We too sometimes tend to block out certain memories. Or, a memory can be tainted by an experience that was scarring. In order to truly remember, one must come to terms with the disagreeable memory and choose to not dwell on it. It is all about perseverance, which is something that Beah emphasizes heavily throughout his novel.
“Little did I know that surviving the war that I was in, or any other kind of war, was not a matter of feeling trained or brave. Those were just things that made me feel I was immune to death”(159).
The training just increased the boy soldier’s assurance that they were indeed immune to death. I think that this makes them more fearless and willing to take risks in an actual battle which is what their commanders surely wanted. For Beah to recognize that they did not truly make him immune, means that he had matured to a new level and had probably experienced a situation where the bravery and training did not protect someone near him.
I think that children already feel immune to death in part and so then training boy soldiers would make them feel even more confident. This is most likely why child soldiers are so commonly used all of the world, even today. They are fearless and will take risks that no adult will because they feel immune to death. They are young and wild and reckless and willing to fight for something that they have been told that they believe in.
“At the end of each laugh there was always some feeling of sadness that I couldn’t escape”(168).
As much as his mind had already snapped from the killing and stopped having a guilty conscience, Beah still had to live with his actions and he was tormented by them every day. He was plagued with horrible migraines and terrifying nightmares. These experiences would not leave him and so behind every laugh was still a darkness. He could not be truly happy because his soldier memories were too strong in his mind.
I wonder if Beah will ever be able to laugh without an underlying sadness? Is it possible for him to escape the nightmares that have plagued him for so long? I think that it is possible because one of Beah’s main points in this novel is that perseverance is important. He was rehabilitated, and while the experiences will never go away, he is learning to cope with them and lead a more normal life. But, I think that it was a choice for him to try to heal, and it is a conscious effort that one must make in order to truly recover from scarring memories.
“I would always tell people that I believe children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance”(169).
Being a reformed child soldier himself, Beah has ethos when he says he believes children can outlive their sufferings. Children are naturally resilient and seem to withstand injuries or circumstances that adults would not handle well. I think that Beah will always have to live with his war memories though. Reformation is definitely possible, but he will never return to the way he was before the war.
Children are naturally very resilient and seem invincible at time, withstanding injuries that adults would not handle as well. Beah became an advocate for change which I think relates to the March for Our Lives campaign and also the #MeToo movement. The activists in these groups are advocates for perseverance and for change. They believe that reformation of what they are fighting for is possible and that through perseverance they will see a positive change.
“I was still hesitant to let myself go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness”(173).
Beah feels that opening up to people is difficult because no one truly understands all that he went through. He still has trust issues and is hesitant to accept that he can actually be happy because in the past, any chance of happiness was always ripped away from him.
Many people believe in the fragility of happiness because they have experienced so many hardships. As they grow, they begin to close themselves off and not trust people simply because it hurts. Children trust freely and find happiness in every little thing whereas adults are wary of people and always seem to find something to complain about.
“Why had I survived the war? Why was I the last person in my immediate family alive? I didn’t know”(179).
At this point in the novel, Beah is questioning his life as he moves forward into a new start with his relatives. He does not feel that he was worthy to live when all of his immediate family died. He does not have the answers and it is troubling him. These rhetorical questions give the readers insight into his thoughts throughout this transition in his life.
At this point I think that Beah is struggling with survivor’s guilt. He does not understand why he is the only one who lived and has no one who can give him the answers. Many people who survive a traumatic event experience survivor's guilt, so these rhetorical questions make him more relatable to the reader because we assume that he would be dealing with questions like this.
“All of this is because of starvation, the loss of our families, and the need to feel safe and be a part of something when all else has broken down”(199).
In this quote, Beah is listing off the reasons that boys join the army in Sierra Leone. He says that the most common ones are starvation, loss, and the need to be included. These elements are core needs of humanity and so it makes sense that the boys would be searching for them. When life gets hard, humans revert to these core needs and become selfish, only trying to keep themselves alive.
These core needs of humanity are what motivate people in everyday life as well. Food, family, and inclusion are elements that humans need on a basic level in order to function. When life erupts into chaos, or even when we face a “simple” (compared to a war) struggle, we revert to these necessities and become self-centered, only concerned with our own survival. Empathy for other people becomes the last thing on our minds.
“I felt bad about what was happening, but not as scared as these people, who had not experienced war before. It was their first time, and it was painful to watch them”(206).
For Beah, this moment was terrifying because he faced the possibility of returning to life as a soldier. But his fear was nothing compared to the pure terror of those around him who were experiencing the war for the first time. He has become numb to it and they were still just as shocked as he was at first. He says later that he saw himself when he looked into their faces.
It was painful for him to watch because he understood their fear. He knew what it was like to completely terrified because he too had been there. He had seen what the war could do and had been just as shocked as they were at first. I think that he also feels sympathy for them, as an adult would for a child during a hard time, because he is really the mature one in the situation, having experienced war firsthand.