Compare And Contrast A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

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Recommended: Child soldiers

Child Soldiers, a major problem in Africa with an estimate of 120,000 children that are currently used as combatants or support personnel to this day. Africa has the highest rate of child soldier use and those enlisted ages are also decreasing, army groups in Africa are manipulating children to be part of a relentless army slowly taking away their childhood after each day. Two stories tell a tale of a child soldier, Ishmael Beah, the writer of the memoir “A Long Way Gone” tells a story of his time as a child soldier and the Netflix Original film and War film Beasts of No Nation tells a story of a young child named Agu becomes a child soldier. These two stories will tell a similar tale of a child’s experience in the war and how it has slowly …show more content…

These may sound like differences, but the similarity between these two is that they both lost a friend due to the war. Ishmael lost his friends in the middle of a gunfight he said “every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two young lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people. I shot everything that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed another strategy”, here we see that Ishmael is furious about losing his two friends. Agu however, his friend Strika dies in front of him by an injury that Strika had. Agu having no way to treat Strika’s wound, he had no other choice but to carry him to safety, but before they made it to safety Strika dies. And having Strika being Agu’s only friend in the army, he has lost everything just like Ishmael. Not only did Agu and Ishmael lost their friends, but they both lost their family as well. Ishmael’s entire family is killed in a fire caused by rebels and Agu’s father and brother was killed by execution by the government army. In spite of revenge, Agu is driven to kill an enemy by the Commandant, after the prisoner To close this topic both Ishmael and Agu lost everything that they care about, they lost their family and friends because of the rebellion taking

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