Struggling the Beast : Child Soldiers in Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone : Memoirs of a Boy Soldier / Ulrich Pallua
Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation from 2005 and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier from 2007 both deal with war and the traumatizing experience of child soldiers. Referring to Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, Stonebridge claims, ‘identity begins with a trauma, a wound in the psyche of which we cannot speak, but upon which we nonetheless fixate in our imperfect memories, fictions, repetitions, and compulsions.’ In the paper I will analyse how war forces Agu in Beasts of No Nation and Ishmael Beah in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier to leave childhood behind and how violence, killing, and sexual abuse profoundly impact on the boys’ rehabilitation process. This process in most cases is a lengthy and challenging struggle to break a vicious circle, that of the bonding with supposed protectors and leaders.
