Memoir Blog- A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

"Through sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night" Oscar Wilde



This quote by Oscar Wilde is mirrored in characters of Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The personification of poverty, sin, misery, and shame in Wilde’s quote relates to the way in which Ishmael (the main character) and all the other boys in the novel feel these emotions. These boys not only feel these emotions, but they become them. They are wrought by misery, sin, shame, and poverty, and essentially become the human shell for which all these emotions are stored.

Ishmael is surrounded by poverty. He has no food, water, shelter or family. He is poverty. After his village was attacked and his family gone, he lived in the woods, surviving off of anything he could find. Ishmael also becomes misery. He misses his family, and mourns their deaths. Everyone that he knew was dying around him and because of this he was depressed and spiritually broken (as anyone would be). He was afraid to think because of the memories and thoughts that came to him. Instead of letting out all his misery in the form of tears, Ishmael would harbor the misery inside him. On top of all the misery and poverty, Ishmael portrays shame. He feels shame for stealing and, most importantly, for leaving his family and friends behind. He also feels shame for not running back and protecting his family, for not sticking together with his friends, and for letting fear take control of him. Ishmael’s shame plagues him day and night, and leads him to have nightmares and, inevitably, sleepless nights, "I became restless and was afraid to sleep for fear that my supressed thoughts would appear in my dreams" (52). Sin is also a large factor in Ishmael’s life. He stole food from children and villages, he stole clothes, and he killed. The feeling of sin came from all his actions that were not normal to him. Ishmael slowly became sin as these violent happenings became everyday events in his life.

Wilde’s quote also represents this memoir in the sequence of events. In the memoir, Ishmael’s sin followed his poverty, and he woke up miserable, in pain, sad, hungry, and scared, and went to bed in shame from the choices he made that day and in the days before. Most of the time, Ishmael could not sleep because sleep would let his mind drift off to all the horrible things he had seen and done. So instead of sleep, Ishmael would sit up at night, looking at the stars. This also follows Wilde’s quote, for shame sat with him at night. Wilde’s quote reflects the feelings and emotions that Ishmael and others went through everyday during their fight for survival in a world that was always threatening.