Theme Of Revenge In A Long Way Gone

Revenge is the idea of personally giving punishment for a wrongful action. Usually it takes the form of “an eye for an eye”, meaning that the offender should be punished by an act of equal value. Throughout the memoir “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah, we get to see his experiences with revenge what his actions caused. It shows that getting revenge is never the answer to your problems as it is unsatisfying , dangerous, and ultimately leads to even more suffering in the long run.
When Ishmael was recruited by the military in Yele, he was given the opportunity to get revenge on the rebels who had taken everything from him by taking part in the fight against them. The officers knew that he and most of the other recruits had that same mindset,

Not all of these villages were rebel controlled either, some of them were just normal villages caught in the crossfire. He actually has a flashback at the a dance about when his squad raided a village while they were holding their own dance. He then remembers the blood on the dance floor and leaves soon after. In the wake of his military career, all he had accomplished was to kill others, and destroy villages and families, just as had happened to him.
Ishmael’s search for revenge ended when he was taken out of the front lines of the war by
UNICEF and put into rehabilitation. He eventually healed and began to forgive himself and others for the violence of the war, and summarizes his view on revenge perfectly: “I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end...” (210). Because he had seen first hand, that revenge wasn’t worth it, was dangerous, and ultimately lead to nothing but