The Good, the Bad and the Ugly…
April 13, 2009
A Long Way Gone is a perfect bookend to my blogging, I feel.
What I found most intriguing, and most pertinent to my blog, was the idea of identity in the story. The author, Ishmael Beah does an excellent job of sliding us into his mentality by setting up the rebels as the evil bad guys, and giving us hints that his own identity of the “good guys.” It begins in the village of Yele, when he and other army members start behaving as the rebels. He states,
Those [soldiers] left behind became restless and started shooting civilians who were on their way to latrines at night (106).
In this way, Beah is giving us a glimpse of the awful transition he and his comrades are going through. He says it so brilliantly offhanded that the reader almost misses it.
Later, this new identity becomes more apparent in the words of his lieutenant. When speaking to the boys about why they must kill the rebels, he is creating the identity inside of them. He states,
That is why we must kill every single [rebel]. Think of it as destroying a great evil. It is the highest service you can perform for your county (108).
This propaganda laden speech creates the identity in the young men of being the good guys, even though they are shooting civilians and ransacking villages like the rebels.
It is only later that Beah and the other soldiers are confronted with the rebel boys. One of the rebel boys even gives a speech that echoes the speech of the army, only with the roles reversed. He states,
We fought for the RUF; the army is the enemy. We fought for freedom, and the army killed my family and destroyed my village (134, emphasis added).
This powerful speech creates confusion for the reader, and with good reason. Beah blurs the lines between good guys and bad guys in this one simple statement. Each side being confronted with their alter-egos, of course, leads to violence. It is difficult to strip an identity wrought in a person for a very long time. Each of us have these notions, no one wants to think of themselves as the bad guy. The fact is, there are people who think every one of us is a bad guy and people who think every one of us is a good guy. But is there solace in that?
W.S.
P.S. If you want to be a good guy (or gal), there is an event sponsored by the Invisible Children on Saturday, April 25th called “The Rescue.” A group of people will be getting together to promote awareness and raise support for the release of child soldiers in Central-East Africa. You can be a part of it, too. For more information go to http://TheRescue.Invisiblechildren.com.
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. 2007. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York.
It is all relative. Good guy. Bad guy. Who can say even what we are? I am not so sure I even know anymore what side we are fighting on. I hope it becomes clearer in the coming months. I believe we always want to be the good guy and convincing ourselves we are the good guy is easy with the right language, the right words and the right mentality. The rebels thought they were the good guys even though they were doing terrible things to innocent people. Terrorists think they are the good guys, too, they are dying for a cause they believe in whole-heatedly, what could be more virtuous than that? We try to define good and bad in black and white terms but it is not possible. We can only try to understand the other side and maybe try to take a look at ourselves from their point of view.
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