All Our Names By Dinaw Mengestu And ABC Antidote By Ishmael Beah

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu and ABC Antidote by Ishmael Beah both deal with education and it’s affect on war. All Our Names is about two college students in Kampala who get tied up in a revolution. ABC Antidote is a short story about two former child soldiers who have finally overcome adversity and managed to get into a university. Mengestu and Beah have both written stories about war and education, but the ways their characters experience these things are vastly different.
The two works share a focus on war, but the perspectives are different. Foday and Abu from Beah’s narrative are nothing but child soldiers in their war. They are pawns to be used as their leaders see fit. Mengestu’s protagonists see their war from quite a different …show more content…
The two believe that education is the solution to stopping violence and can mend the mind and spirit after they have been broken. The narrator pursues his higher education in the states as an escape from his past. He buries himself in his books and his relationship with Helen to try and forget his experiences in the war. His studies distract his mind so he won’t remember things like going through the bodies on a truck praying each time he turned one over that it wasn’t Isaac or the night he and Isaac spent in the city while the young men they supplied with guns got slaughtered by the soldiers all around …show more content…
During the war all of the former students find comfort in the singing of their old school songs. These actions keep the hunger for knowledge and independence alive in the young soldiers throughout their forced fighting. When they are finally free of their war, the young men work hard to earn enough money to continue their education so that one-day they can combat violence in the world with education. They have learned to not take education for granted and will cherish every second in the classroom. On the other hand, the narrator and Isaac use their education to help create a revolution and to survive a war, not combat it. The narrator takes his education in the states for granted and focuses instead on his relationship with Helen. He feels that his time in war is in the past and now that he has a new life in the states, thanks to his most likely deceased friend Isaac, he can forget it and move