For a novel like this, the title can be used as an excellent jumping-off point for analysis. The title invites the reader to analyze the plot to find instances of dehumanization. The signs of slavery are clear; the children are unable to leave, and their participation in military activity is not optional so that a culture emerges among the child soldiers where they harden themselves emotionally to do what they have to do each day for survival. The slavery is accentuated by their youth; the reader naturally detests such men as those who could subject children to slavery and combat.
This inversion of innocence and experience is a sign for human evil. Here, the Beasts of No Nation are treated as if their bodies, minds, and souls were merely the property of local militias in a quest for power. The symbolism for human evil involves offenses against children—even rape—and also forced violence. By making the children kill, the children are permanently traumatized into a state of detachment that makes them able to do such things. The dehumanizing process is trauma and absolute emotional torture.
For the portrait of evil, the reader therefore finds this: Evil is that which makes a man exploit a weak and powerless orphan, submitting them to one's own will for slavery of various kinds including sexual slavery of a child and forced violence. Evil has thematic connections to the willingness to use power for one's own advantage, because as the willingness to do evil increases, the power of the exploitation grows so that the evilest men in the region succeed in attaining the power. This is also a portrait of the instability in the region.
