Even though the primary focus of the memoir is on the suffering of a child soldier, this part of the book was refreshingly uplifting. Beah is sent to a rehabilitation center in order to recover from his experiences with the RUF. Despite the massive amounts of violence and aggression Beah was forced to internalize, he finds solace in both music and a counselor named Esther. Beah is thorough in his description of his own rehabilitation process. That is, he makes sure that the reader is aware of his initial anxieties and resistance towards recovery. Even so, Beah shows that with time recovery will always come. He makes clear in the beginning of the book that music has always been a source of immense happiness for him. Therefore, it makes sense that music plays a large role in his recovery process. On page 160 Beah writes, “Esther got me to tell her some of my dreams. She would just listen and sit quietly with me. If she wanted to say anything, she would first ask, ‘Would you like me to say something about your dream?’ Mostly I would say no and ask for the Walkman.” This passage underscores Beah’s initial resistance to Esther’s attempts at helping him, yet his unwavering interest in music. Soon, his relationship with Esther and his love of music blend together. He says, “I began to look forward to Esther’s arrival in the afternoons. I sang her parts of the songs I had memorized that day. Memorizing lyrics left me little time to think about what had happened in the war” (163). Here, his tendency to use music as an escape enables him to recover the trauma caused by the war. As I said earlier in this post, this section of the memoir was very uplifting: it shows that despite any trauma, no matter how severe, there is never a point of no return. Recovery is always possible.
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