The Monkey

I would like to tell you a story. One I read at the very end of A Long Way Gone. Ishmael tells a story of when he was a young boy back in his original village before the war. It goes something like this, "A hunter goes into the bush (savannah, plains, non-settled ground, hunting ground, that kind of thing, also where he spent most of this book) to hunt a monkey. Very shortly after walking into the bush he sees a monkey sitting in a low branch of a tree just chilling. The monkey didn't pay any attention to the hunter, even as he walked through the dried leaves on the ground, as they rose and fell, the monkey didn't care.  Once the hunter got close enough and behind a tree where he could still see the monkey clearly he raised his rifle ready to fire, at that moment the monkey looked at him and said 'If you shoot  me your mother will die, and if you don't fire your father will die.' After saying this he went back to his position, chewing its food, and occasionally scratched its head or belly as if nothing ever happened." Apparently this is a very common story in Sierra Leone and even in some surrounding countries, and as a child is told this story he is normally accompanied by both of his parents to make the decision tougher. Now their would be a good time to tell this story, but where he ended up telling this story doesn't make much sense, he tells it literally five very short paragraphs from the ending of his book. He eventually answers the question with this answer, "I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the ability to put other hunters in this predicament." Now if this story were actually real, he would sacrifice the life of his mother for the meat of the monkey and the security in knowing no one else would ever be put in the same situation again. I think that this is an analogy to the extremely tough decisions that he had faced throughout his entire experience, both before, during, and after his time as a child soldier. I would say that a lot of the stories that he told in this book would be relatable to this question in the main way. Is killing one worth the effects that it has on the world? I believe the main point of this question is to show that all decisions no matter how big or how small always have unseen consequences that you must live with. Although in this story the consequences are told to the hunter, I believe that this relates to decisions whether you know the consequences or not, and that why it is so common.