The adolescents in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone are entangled in chaotic situations that places them in vulnerable positions to commit dangerous acts of violence. In Golding’s novel, a cluster of boys are trapped on an unknown island caused by a fatal plane crash that leads to the lack of adult supervision, and the need for survival causes two leaders to emerge from the group: Jack and Ralph. Although Jack seemingly submitted to Ralph’s authority at the beginning
of a child soldier, as recounted by Ishmael Beah in his 2007 book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” is one of heinous violence. However, as Beah proved, these children can build a life for themselves away from the horror of civil war. After the book was published, author William Boyd printed his analysis of Beah’s novel in The New York Times. “Babes in Arms” compared “A Long Way Gone” to other novels written about African conflicts and praised Beah for his unique first-hand account of
as a parental figure, due to being with them a lot of the time. They are easily ripped away from their family so ridiculously fast that they seem to automatically start to depend or cling to the person(s) that abducted them. In the video called “Ishmael Beah -- Child Soldier”, where a real life survivor from his interval of child soldier tasks talks about how some genuinely began to love their captors, and how scared they were when that started and didn’t stop. This proves that these children are so