Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Living… in no one place for too long. He leads his rebels throughout various villages on their way to conquer the Western part of Africa.
Profession… war leader. The Commandant has been tasked with building a squadron of rebel troops, and he reports directly to the NDF leader, Dada Goldblood. Goldblood communicates with the Commandant via radio and gives him instructions on how to proceed. While he doesn’t fight himself, he is essentially in charge of every other aspect of the war effort. The Commandant is a savvy war general, as his squadron NDF, has gained a reputation of being an efficient and deadly group that has taken over large regions in West Africa in a coup.
Interests… money. As a reward for his wartime efforts, the Commandant expects compensation in the form of the share of resources that have been accumulated in the overthrowing of the villages.
Challenge… winning the war they started. If their coup is not ultimately successful, he will be charged with war crimes and killed. To assure victory, the Commandant rules his army of young kids with an iron fist and trains them to become ruthless killers. It is the Commandant’s job not only to teach them how to handle weaponry, but to change their perspective on life itself. He believes a soldier should be disciplined, alert, and most of all should be prepared to kill at any moment. The kids who serve him have no one else, so he is a father figure to them. They look up to the Commandant and want his approval—even if that means taking a machete to innocent citizens. The Commandat has become particularly close to a young boy named Agu, who is one of the most promising solders.
Personality… ruthless, intelligent, and greedy. The Commandant is an imposing figure who is a charismatic leader. He is a sort of God in the young boys’ eyes, as they obey his every command. But make no mistake: he is a ruthless war tactician with no regard for human life and with only personal gain on his mind.
Get to Know him in...
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A drama based on the experiences of Agu, a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country. Follows the journey of a young boy, Agu, who is forced to join a group of soldiers in a fictional West African country. While Agu fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination Depicts the mechanics of war and does not shy away from explicit, visceral detail, and paints a complex, difficult picture of Agu as a child soldier.
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Now a critically-acclaimed Netflix original film directed by Cary Fukunaga (True Detective) and starring Idris Elba (Mandela, The Wire)—the movie-tie in edition of the harrowing, utterly original debut novel by Uzodinma Iweala about the life of a child soldier in a war-torn African country.
As civil war ravages an unnamed West-African nation, Agu, the school-aged protagonist of this stunning debut novel, is recruited into a unit of guerilla fighters. Haunted by his father’s own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander.
While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started—a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family, still intact. As he vividly recalls these sunnier times, his daily reality continues to spin further downward into inexplicable brutality, primal fear, and loss of selfhood. In a powerful, strikingly original voice, Uzodinma Iweala leads the reader through the random travels, betrayals, and violence that mark Agu’s new community. Electrifying and engrossing, Beasts of No Nation announces the arrival of an extraordinary new writer.
