Memoir Quote Blog

“Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.” Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde’s quote relates to Ismael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier for its powerful message emphasized by its anguished tone. Poverty, sin, misery, and shame are all key themes Beah encounters on his journey to survive. Everyday is a constant struggle, and in that struggle lays fear as well as a hope for a better day.

A direct relationship between Beah’s memoir and Wilde’s quote is the use of personification. Throughout the hardships described in A Long Way Gone, Beah often personifies nature, similar to the way Wilde personifies these depressing nouns. One of many examples is found on page 80, “Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them.” Again, the solemn tone prevails in this quote. The night weeps, and the boys’ wishes are unheard, very much like the first four words of Wilde’s quote reading, “Through our sunless lanes.” Both of these quotes depict the hopelessness and sorrow of the scene they are describing.

The diction of poverty, sin, misery, and shame are very closely related to the themes present throughout A Long Way Gone. The poverty of the Sierra Leone has been one of the many factors of this civil war. As in Wilde’s quote, “[…] creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes”, this can be seen as the boys’ starvation from lack of basic foods as well as the power hungry RUF and corrupt government that has led to these horrific attacks. The boys are stripped of their wealth in innocence and pride as children – they have become poor in this sense. The sins and miseries of everyday since they were separated from their families are inescapable. The sins of the RUF, the government, and even these young brainwashed boys mount up because of the horrible conditions in this colony of Africa. Sin has a sodden face because it is saturated with disaster and unforeseen guilt. The misery of the lives of these boys ranging from the torture of not knowing what has happened to their families, to, as later described in the memoirs, the misery of living as a soldier with only drugs, lies, and killing to guide them. The presence of shame sits with them at night because of the later acknowledgement for what they have done, and how Sierra Leone as a whole is in shame for how this colony’s own people are slaughtering one another. It is the shame Beah later feels that keeps him human, that reminds him of who he really is and how he can change for the better.