In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah explained his journey throughout his life; whether it was with his family and friends or at war against the rebels in Sierra Leone. During the attack on his village in Mogbwemo, Beah was separated from his family when he was in another city with his brother and friends. At the young age of twelve, Beah was forced to flee from village to village with the aim of escaping the rebels. Eventually, he reluctantly joined the army as a soldier against the rebels. Throughout his memoir, Beah used multiple different tones. Beah described the cheerful times with family and friends, along with the dreadful and shocking times of war. In the beginning of Beah’s memoir, the tone was suspenseful. When Beah’s village was under attack by rebels, his family had to escape, while he was with his brother and friends in another city. During that time, he had to fend for himself and try to survive out in the open, without his parents, along with his brother and friends. Eventually, Beah was separated from his brother and friends and was all alone. “I walked for two days …show more content…
From many dark to happy times that were never ending. Ishmael Beah examines his life with different tones that enhanced the effect of the story through many intriguing events. From happy occasions to horrendous times of war, with the rebel attack on his home village, to losing his family and being forced to fight the rebels as an army soldier. Beah started out with suspenseful and terrifying tones when he was separated from family and friends when the war started and had to survive on his own. Then the tone changed to dark, life-threatening, and dismal when he reluctantly was in the army killing rebels and given drugs to cope and continue killing. In conclusion, the tone was pleased, satisfied, and peaceful when he was rehabilitated out of the army and went to New York City where he was adopted and could be a kid
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.
This novel shows experiences you would encounter during school, such as bullying which is the primary focus in this storyline. Over 160,000 people worldwide stay home every day because of bullying. Ishmael believes he has Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome (ILS), a syndrome he named after his own name, and the only person to have ILS. This syndrome has “caused” him to have low IQ and he describes it as “a walking disaster”. Barry Bagsley causes Ishmael to have many complications throughout the novel. Barry Bagsley finds opportunity
Ishmael was a normal 12 year old boy in a small village in Sierra Leone when his life took a dramatic turn and he was forced into a war. War has very serious side effects for all involved and definitely affected the way Ishmael views the world today. He endured and saw stuff that most people will never see in a lifetime let alone as a young child. Ishmael was shaped between the forced use of drugs, the long road to recovery and the loss of innocence of his
Throughout the course of this novel, Ishmael Beah keeps the readers on the edge of their seat by incorporating interchanging tones. At the beginning of the novel, the tone can be depicted as naïve, for Beah was unaware to what was actually occurring with the rebels. Eventually, the tone shifts to being very cynical and dark when he depicts the fighting he has endured both physically and mentally. However, the most game changing tone is towards the end of the novel in chapters nineteen and twenty. His tone can be understood as independent or prevailing. It can be portrayed as independent because Beah learns how to survive on his own and to take care of himself. At the same time, it is perceived as prevailing and uplifting because Beah was able to demonstrate that there is hope. Later in the novel, Beah travels to
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.
No one knows what will happen in his or her life whether it is a trivial family dispute or a civil war. Ishmael Beah and Mariatu Kamara are both child victims of war with extremely different life stories. Both of them are authors who have written about their first-hand experience of the truth of the war in order to voice out to the world to be aware of what is happening. Beah wrote A Long Way Gone while Kamara wrote The Bite of the Mango. However, their autobiographies give different information to their readers because of different points of view. Since the overall story of Ishmael Beah includes many psychological and physical aspects of war, his book is more influential and informative to the world than Kamara’s book.
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.
...ploys children rather than men. He is subjected to the violence of the war for more than three years before he is finally rescued by an organization dedicated to rehabilitating child soldiers. Once Ishmael discovers happiness, affection, and a will to survive, he regains what hope he had lost. No matter the circumstances concerning it, hope has always been the trigger for events in Ishmael’s life, thus making hope a theme present throughout the entirety of A Long Way Gone. Hope allows Ishmael to bounce back from the tragic events that marked his teenage years and discover a will to survive.
Most people who Ishmael came in contact with and himself, had a conflict between trust and survival. This conflict became an effect of the war in which many people suffered because they chose to live over a possible death. Beah retells his traumatic experience that gives countless situations where survival is picked over trust. In a world without war trust and survival can be
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.’”
At nature, a gentle young boy, 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 a story of revitalisation and hopefulness. CHRONOLIGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF EVENTS THAT LEAD TO CONFLICTS A long way gone is the factual story of Ishmael Beah, who turns out to be an unenthusiastic boy warrior throughout civil warfare in Sierra Leone. In Chapter 1, at twelve years of age, January 1993 Beah’s town is attacked while he is gone performing in a rap group with accomplice’s.
Ishmael Chambers constantly struggles quietly with his PTSD throughout the novel, he has had to deal with the loss of a limb and having constant flashbacks or his time in the Marines. Ishmael has had to deal with the difficulties and constant looks come with not having an arm. He has felt numb ever since the war. Ishmael not only talks about his time in the Marines the shares the story of the loss of his arm. Going back to that day and the description of the events, clearly show how greatly his time there had affected him. Guterson writes, "It was difficult to know what the point would be of talking about such a thing. There was no point to anything that was clear. He couldn't think straight about anything that had happened since a landing
In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, a former boy soldier with the Sierra Leone army during its civil war(1991- 2002) with the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), provides an extraordinary and heartbreaking account of the war, his experience as a child soldier and his days at a rehabilitation center. At the age of twelve, when the RUF rebels attack his village named Mogbwemo in Sierro Leone, while he is away with his brother and some friends, his life takes a major twist. While seeking news of his family, Beah and his friends find themselves constantly running and hiding as they desperately strive to survive in a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. During this time, he loses his dear ones and left alone in the wilderness, is forced to face many physical and psychological dangers. By thirteen, he has been picked up by the government army, and is conditioned to fight in the war by being provided with as many drugs as he could consume (cocaine and marijuana), rudimentary training, and an AK-47. In the next two years, Beah goes on a mind-bending killing spree to avenge the death of his dear ones. At sixteen, he was picked up by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at the rehabilitation center, he learns to forgive himself and to regain his humanity.
In “A Long Way Gone”, we follow a twelve-year-old African boy, Ishmael Beah, who was in the midst, let alone survived a civil war in Sierra Leone, that turned his world upside down. Ishmael was a kind and innocent boy, who lived in a village where everybody knew each other and happiness was clearly vibrant amongst all the villagers. Throughout the novel, he describes the horrific scenes he encounters that would seem unreal and traumatizing to any reader. The main key to his survival is family, who swap out from being related to becoming non-blood related people who he journeys with and meets along his journey by chance.