Ishmael Beah Quotes

687 Words2 Pages

Bryson Couch 669 words Ms. Maggert Honors English III 18 May 2016 The Boy Soldier We all fight different wars. These wars can physically and mentally traumatize us as people. Mentally rehabilitation is necessary to bring back peace of mind. Love ones being murdered in cold blood, torturous scenes, and death that we could never imagine as a United States citizen led ishmael beah on a path of revenge. Violence is used to cope in some cases, but it can only lead to more death. In this novel, violence is used as a way to express inner anger and as a way to deal with many fatalities. Violence is seen at many angles in this book whether you’re being shot at, tortured, or beaten severely. A Long Way Gone [book titles always get italicized, not underlined or quote marks] is a simple memoir describing horrific events that ishmael beah experienced in his childhood. Ishmael Beah wrote, “ I especially enjoyed burning this village today.” (Author pg). This quote explains how Beah was transformed to a young soldier from a fragile boy by his war stricken country. …show more content…

Beah struggled and it was easy to tell that the violence he saw changed him. Things started to steadily improve for him, but he knew all the killing he did will never be extinguished from his mind. Adjusting back to a modern day society was unknown to him, but he somehow accomplished his goal. He is now a Children's rights leader, and wants to end global child wars. Beah said, “ What happens in the context of war is that, in order for you to make a child into a killer, you destroy everything that they know, which is what happened to me and my town. My family was killed, all of my family, so I had nothing.” The horrors he faced can not be relinquished from his mind. They will forever be with him, and the goal of this novel is to notify everyday people about the ongoing child wars in foreign

Show More
Related

  • Ishmael Beah Prediction

    550 Words  | 2 Pages

    The title A Long Way Gone tells me that the story follows the life of a young boy who had encountered war first hand. As stated in the title, this is a memoir written by the soldier in the book. Since this is

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Ishmael Beah And All Quiet On The Civil War

    1080 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fear, an emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat, a feeling that no one wants to go through on a serious level. Imagine suddenly waking up to the sounds of gunshots and bombs without warning or constantly being surrounded by formidable men bearing guns. These experiences were not unusual for Ishmael Beah, the author of the book A Long Way Gone, and Paul Baumer, the protagonist of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque. Both books are based off a war; however, All Quiet on the Western Front is based off Paul’s involvement in WWI and A Long Way Gone is about Ishmael’s exposure to the civil war within Sierra Leone. Although the books are different in content, they both show

    Read More

  • Ishmael Beah's Recovery

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    This psychological memoir is written from the eyes of Ishmael Beah and it describes his life through the war and through his recovery. War is one of the most horrific things that could ever happen to anyone. Unwilling young boy soldiers, innocent mothers and children are all affected. In most instances, the media or government does not show the horrific parts of war, instead they focus on the good things that happen to make the people happy and not cause political issues. In his book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah dispels the romanticism around war through the loss of childhood innocence, the long road of emotional recovery and the mental and physical effects of war.

    Read More

  • Loss of Innocence in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

    1483 Words  | 3 Pages

    Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.

    Read More

  • A Long Way Gone Survival Essay

    531 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the war, people struggle to differentiate their enemies from friends causing people to act on fear. Survival is paramount and trusting someone can lead to the deaths of an entire village. Beah wrote,”Many times during our journey were surrounded by muscular men with machetes who almost killed us before realizing we were children just running away from war.” (Page 72, Chapter 8). War causes people to be on edge and trust is no longer a connection but a reason that could end a person's life. The major theme in “A Long Way Gone” is survival and acting based on an emotional concept can cost atrocities.

    Read More

  • War and the Loss of Innocence

    1321 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Attitude in All Quiet on the Western Front

    787 Words  | 2 Pages

    during the war. This novel is able to portray the overwhelming effects and power war has

    Read More

  • Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    1020 Words  | 3 Pages

    An attention-grabbing story of a youngster’s voyage from end to end. In “A LONG WAY GONE,” Ishmael Beah, at present twenty six years old tells a fascinating story he had always kept from everyone. When he was twelve years of age, he escaped attacking the revolutionaries and roamed a land-living rendered distorted by violence. By thirteen, he’d been chosen up by the government military and Ishmael Beah at nature a gentle young boy, bring into being that he was accomplished of really dreadful deeds. Few days later on the rampage he is unrestricted by military and referred to a UNICEF rehabilitation centre, he wriggled to re-claim his humankind and to re-enter the biosphere of non-combatants, who seen him with terror and distrust . This is at preceding a story of revitalisation and hopefulness.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Imagery In A Long Way Gone

    1057 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine yourself in the shoes of a twelve year old boy who vigorously fought through blood and death, seeking for survival and hope during a Civil War in Sierra Leone. The novel, A Long Way Gone, tells the story of, Ishmael Beah, a young boy who experienced the mental and physical battle of reluctantly becoming a soldier. Today, majority of us can relate to Ishmael’s unfortunate circumstances through his life because it is something that we have all been affected by individually in areas all across the world. Beah’s memoirs as a boy soldier instantly caught my attention from beginning to end because of his clear, apprehensible voice and ability to draw readers into the action. Throughout this book, Ishmael focused most on very descriptive details

    Read More

  • A Long Way Gone Symbolism Essay

    607 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ishmael’s nightmares are a strong reminder to the reader that the oppression of war has even robbed Ishmael of the simple freedom of sleep.

    Read More

  • Review of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

    1755 Words  | 4 Pages

    This book is definitely a piece of writing that helps open our eyes to the ugliness that is going on in the world today. Chris Hedges' central message is to stop hating and start learning how to love. This book is a deep, personal reflection on many wars by an award-winning journalist. Every civilian, military member, and political leader should undoubtedly read this book. War skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.

    Read More

  • A Long Way Gone Analysis

    808 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ys, they are seized by soldiers and taken to a village engrossed by the military fighting back at the rebels. The fellow children soldiers became Ishmael’s only family at the time, and each of them were supplemented with a white pill, “The corporal said it will boost your energy” says a young soldier. (116) Little did Ishmael and the others know that the tablet was an illicit drug given to them to fight their fatigue and anxiety for a short term to better them in combat with the rebels. Beah unknowingly alters into a blood-craving animal, who kills with numbness and no emotion. “I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them.” (119) Ishmael now relies and is addicted to drugs to get through his day-to-day life, including smoking marijuana, and constantly snorting “brown brown” (121) which is a mixture of gunpowder and cocaine.

    Read More

  • Disillusualism In Chickamauga

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the short story “Chickamauga”, the author Ambrose Bierce uses a young boy to connect to his audience with what is the disillusions of war, then leads them into the actuality and brutalities of war. Bierce uses a six year old boy as his instrument to relate to his readers the spirits of men going into combat, then transferring them into the actual terrors of war.

    Read More

  • All Quiet on the Western Front and the Horrors of War

    728 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout their lives, people must deal with the horrific and violent side of humanity. The side of humanity is shown through the act of war.  This is shown in Erich Remarque’s novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front”.  War is by far the most horrible thing that the human race has to go through.  The participants in the war suffer irreversible damage by the atrocities they witness and the things they go through.

    Read More

  • The Narrow Road To The Deep North Essay

    1051 Words  | 3 Pages

    Flanagan censures all aspects of war, from combat to the long-lasting psychological impacts. The horrors of war that Flanagan discusses in his novel remain relevant to this day. We must use the atrocities of the past as a mirror for our actions today. Military prisons such as Guantanamo Bay and Okinawa still exist, and if we forget the abhorrent occurrences in Japanese prison camps, we allow the same abuses of power to occur again. If we quickly forget the horrors of war, what will stop us from entering more wars and recreating the same awful circumstances? The consequences of war that Flanagan describes in The Narrow Road to the Deep North will remain relevant through the rest of humanity’s

    Read More

More about Ishmael Beah Quotes

Open Document