Corruption Of Innocence: War Memory, Trauma And Violence In Beasts Of No Nation.

Abstract

Being in control for most of the 1990s, the count of civil wars has tripled in the past decade. Dating from 2011 to this day, an approximation of six fold swelling in battle deaths have been listed since the end of cold war. The dreadful practise during the war period is the inhumane use of child soldiers and exposing them to the terrifying phase of violence. The military use of children carves in them intense scars, both physically and psychologically, which remains unhealed in utmost cases.

This paper is targeted to the psychological pressures of being a child soldier - the traumatic injury to the human capital. The analysis of the study is drawn from the movie ‘Beasts of No Nation’(2015) -the story of the evolution of a boy sheltered from war into a child soldier executing war, by Cary Joji Fukunaga. This movie reflects on the pitiful recruitment of child soldiers and how they are corrupted, persecuted and transformed from a sufferer of civil war to a destructive beast. The traumatic

influences have been viewed from Cathy Caruth's perspective of trauma highlighted in ‘Unclaimed Experience’.