In his memoir, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah speaks of his loss of innocence as he is forced to join the Sierra Leone Children's Army in the country's civil war after being drafted. to the army that destroyed his city so that Ishmael could survive. His memoir is a voice to show the many hardships that members of the Sierra Leone Children's Army had to endure and their daily struggle to survive in the worst conditions. In order to escape the perils and trials of war, Ishmael loses his innocence as he goes from a kid who loved to rap with his friends to a cold-blooded soldier in the army during Sierra Leone's civil war . During his transition, Ishmael is forced to resort to addiction to drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, and "brown-brown" just so that he and the other members of the Children's Army can have the courage to be able to kill their children. compatriots and massacre entire towns that stand in their way. In order to depict his struggles in the military, Ishmael uses the dramatic elements of memories explained through flashback, dialogue, and first-person narration in order to establish the memoir's theme of how war causes a child to lose his or her innocence. The transition shown in the memoir illustrates how the title of the novel, A Long Way Gone, was chosen because it demonstrates how far he has come psychologically, emotionally and physically from the child he was in beginning of the memoirs up to the soldier he is forced to become. Ishmael Baeh's transition from innocent child to soldier with the blood of his countrymen on his hands is chronicled in his memoir through the use of flashbacks that explain his memories. At the beginning of the memo... middle of paper ... through many difficult trials and tribulations which culminated in his loss of his innocence after he became a member of the Children's Army in Sierra Leone. These experiences caused him, like the other members of the Children's Army, to change physically because of his drug addiction, psychologically because of his repressed memories, and emotionally because of the desensitization to war and death that made him part of his training. This caused Ishmael to transform from an innocent young boy into a killing machine exploited by his military handlers. Ishmael was able to express his loss of innocence in his memoir through the use of dialogue, first-person narration, and by recounting his memories through flashbacks. The loss of innocence is linked to the title of the memoir because emotionally, physically and psychologically he was far from the boy he was before the army..