War. It is something that is always there like air. Even though at times it is not seen, it is present and active. Maybe it is in different parts of the world, but it just may be right around the bend. No matter where one is located, fighting bloody battles is one thing always occurring. Little innocent children, their fathers and mothers, and all sorts of relatives are perishing due to the effect of the endless wars. In the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah, a young boy of twelve is recruited to become a soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone. Beah’s village gets attacked by rebels and forces himself to become separated from his family. Food becomes scarce as he and his rap friend wander from villages …show more content…
The boys are soon in training to fight against the rebels where they become brainwashed against humanity and begin committing brutal bloody acts. After many years, Ishmael is taken to a rehabilitation camp to become a child again. Ishmael is constantly struggling within himself to figure out right from wrong. He slowly overcomes his past and fights through his horrid memories of war. The war that changed his life forever. War began the endless struggles within Ishmael's mind and soul which had deteriorated his humanity. Despite the effects of being a soldier in war, Ishmael was given the opportunity to change and become human again. This opportunity, called the Benin House or the rehabilitation center played that vital role. Before Ishmael’s breakthrough to humanity, he was unrecognizable. All the soldiers including himself were rough, tough, and cruel. Many tried stealing anything they wanted. Ishmael and the other soldiers would often get into death fights with rebels being rehabilitated as well. At one time, many soldiers who hid weapons on them used them in these types of circumstances. “I took out my grenade and put my fingers inside the pin. 'Do you boys want this to be your last meal, or do you want to answer his question?”(Beah 133). All …show more content…
Not only to the body of those fighting, but also their minds. Boys struggle within themselves over their memories and following reactions. Battles ruin people's lives forever and some never live past childhood. Lives are lost endlessly with no hope of returning. Ishmael was one of those lucky ones to return from war. He fought with all his might to get what he lost. He lived because of hope expelled off of others. Though the process was hard, he learned that it is possible to be saved through only hope and love. “It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it. I have been rehabilitated now, so don’t be afraid of me. I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child” (199). Ishmael won the fight with his own mind and is living once again. A real and true
Throughout the book the audience has seen Ishmael go through adventure and sorrow. In the novel Ishmael is forced to go to war at age thirteen, but what keeps him going were his grandmother's wise words. His grandmother was the one who told him powerful lessons that he could use in real life. These lesson that Ishmael is keeping him grounded is not only from his grandmother but also from his friends. Lessons that were seen by the readers are “wild pigs”, “Bra Spider”, and the story about the moon.
A prominent theme in A Long Way Gone is about the loss of innocence from the involvement in the war. A Long Way Gone is the memoir of a young boy, Ishmael Beah, wanders in Sierra Leone who struggles for survival. Hoping to survive, he ended up raiding villages from the rebels and killing everyone. One theme in A long Way Gone is that war give innocent people the lust for revenge, destroys childhood and war became part of their daily life.
In the book A Long Way Gone written by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael survives and describes his journey while at war. Ishmael was a 13 year old who is forced to become a child soldier. He struggles through a variety of problems. In his journey, he was separated from his family and mostly running for his life. Later on, he has no problem killing people and picking up his gun. In fact, anyone can be evil at any certain time with kids changing, getting drugged, and going back to war.
Ishmael starts his journey with a will to escape and survive the civil war of Sierra Leone in order to reunite with his mom, dad, and younger siblings, who fled their home when his village was attacked by rebels. Having only his older brother, who he escaped with, and a few friends by his side Ishmael is scared, but hopeful. When the brothers are captured by rebels, Ishmael’s belief in survival is small, as indicated by his fallible survival tactics when he “could hear the gunshots coming closer…[and] began to crawl farther into the bushes” (Beah 35). Ishmael wants to survive, but has little faith that he can. He is attempting to survive by hiding wherever he can- even where the rebels can easily find him. After escaping, Ishmael runs into a villager from his home tells him news on the whereabouts of his family. His optimism is high when the villager, Gasemu, tells Ishmael, “Your parents and brothers wil...
In Joseph Plumb Martin’s account of his experiences in the Revolutionary War he offers unique insight into the perspective of a regular soldier, which differs from the views of generals and leaders such as popular characters like George Washington. Martin’s narrative is an asset to historical scholarship as a primary source that gives an in-depth look at how life in the army was for many young men during the War for Independence. He described the tremendous suffering he experienced like starvation and privation. He did not shy away from describing his criticism of the government who he believes did not adequately care for the soldiers during and after the war. While he may be biased because of his personal involvement as a soldier, he seems to relate accounts that are plausible without embellishment or self-aggrandizement. Overall, “A Narrative of A Revolutionary Soldier” is a rich source of information providing an overview of military experience during the war.
In his memoir, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah deals with his loss of innocence as he is forced to join the children army of Sierra Leone in the country's civil war after being conscripted to the army that once destroyed his town in order for Ishmael to survive. His memoir acts as a voice to show the many difficulties that the members of Sierra Leone's child army had to suffer through and their day to day struggle to survive in the worst of conditions. In order to escape the perils and trials of war, Ishmael loses his innocence as he transitions from a child who liked to rap with his friends to a cold blooded solider in the army during the civil war in Sierra Leone. Through his transition, Ishmael is forced to resort to the addiction of drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, and “brown-brown” just so that he, along with the other members of the child army can have the courage to be able to kill their fellow countrymen and slaughter entire towns who stand in their paths. In order to portray his struggles in the army, Ishmael uses the dramatic elements of memories explained using flashback, dialogue, and first-person narration in order to establish the theme of the memoir being how war causes for a child to lose its innocence. The transition shown in the memoir illustrates how the title of the novel, A Long Way Gone, was chosen because it demonstrates how he is a long way gone psychologically, emotionally, and physically, from the child that he was when the memoir begins to the soldier that he is forced to become.
Ishmael’s search for revenge ended when he was taken out of the front lines of the war by
In addition to him having to overcome difficult odds in order to survive for himself, he also had to care for his weakening father. A similar situation occurs in A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, however, Ishmael accepts the situation and is able to defend himself. While they differ in their ability to defend themselves, they both relate in that they need to fight, both mentally and physically, in order to survive. not only because of the hardships they faced, but also because of what they had to do in order to survive. “‘I have never spoken about the Holocaust except in one book.’”
During the War, after Ishmael's return, and throughout the trial of Kabuo, Hatsue's husband, Ishmael struggles with his feelings, hi...
Many people question if Guy Sajer, author of The Forgotten Soldier, is an actual person or only a fictitious character. In fact, Guy Sajer in not a nom de plume. He was born as Guy Monminoux in Paris on 13 January 1927. At the ripe young age of 16, while living in Alsace, he joined the German army. Hoping to conceal his French descent, Guy enlisted under his mother's maiden name-Sajer. After the war Guy returned to France where he became a well known cartoonist, publishing comic books on World War II under the pen name Dimitri.
The New York Times Bestseller We Were Soldiers Once... And Young was authored by Lt. General Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway. In November 1965, Lt. Colonel Harold Moore commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th cavalry at the Ia Drang Valley-one of the bloodiest battles of Vietnam. He eventually retired from the Army in 1977 after thirty-two years of service. After his military career, Lieutenant General Moore resided as executive vice president for four years at a Colorado ski resort before founding a computer software company. Harold Moore currently lives in Auburn, Alabama and Crested Butte, Colorado.
“Every war is everyone’s war”... war will bring out the worst in even the strongest and kindest people. The book tells about how ones greed for something can destroy everything for both people and animals leaving them broken beyond repair, leaving them only with questions… Will they ever see their family again? Will they ever experience what it’s like to
Ishmael learned human language and culture at zoos and menageries, and began to think about the world in a way completely differently than he would have in the wild. The narrator has similar feelings of living in captivity, but has trouble articulating how or why.
War has always been something to be dreaded by people since nothing good comes from it. War affects people of all ages, cultures, races and religion. It brings change, destruction and death and these affect people to great extents. “Every day as a result of war and conflict thousands of civilians are killed, and more than half of these victims are children” (Graca & Salgado, 81). War is hard on each and every affected person, but the most affected are the children.
Living in a war-ridden area can change one’s mentality towards war and violence as well as change their personality as a whole. The way a person perceives war is dependent upon how much their lives are impacted by it. In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah dispels the romanticism of war in the same way that Marjane Satrapi does in her memoir, Persepolis, as they both tell their stories from the point of view of a child through major cultural change, the loss of innocence in children, and the death of family members and friends.