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 kills people without it being a big problem or deal. He was forced and threatened. If not then he would be killed. First, he was terrified to see people being killed. In the book, Ishmael quotes “My hand began trembling uncontrollably…” This shows that Ishmael is being aware of his surroundings and of himself. This is important because it shows how Ishmael feels before he and his …show more content…
This made the children and Ishmael have a difficult time taking them. Drugs were used in order to go to war. The fact of Ishmael taking drugs made him an addict. Young kids didn’t know what they were given. In the book, Ishmael says “ A young soldier came by…some kind of tablets. They looked like capsules...plain white.” Ishmael didn’t know what he took until later on. “The...drugs give us fierce.” This shows that Ishmael took drugs even if he wasn’t at war. Another way they also used drugs to relief nightmares and the pain. He suffered from nightmares before the war and pain while in war. He didn’t care the state he was in. This quote says “I shot a couple of rounds sitting...the bandage on my foot and everyone else. I smoked marijuana, ate, and snorted cocaine...” This says that Ishmael state of mind change by taking drugs. Furthermore, Ishmael had trouble sleeping. “ I immediately woke up from my dream and began shooting...The corporal and lieutenant came...sweating...they threw water on my face and gave me...white capsules.” This quote
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.
As I looked at the front and back of A Long Way Gone, I’ve predicted that the story will take place in Sierra Leone, Africa. On the back cover, there is a summary that describes what Ishmael Beah had experienced as a very young child. The photograph on the front cover is a visual representation of the book. From this picture, I can predict that Ishmael was forced to carry many weapons and he is walking often to each destination. I came to this prediction because the boy in the picture is carrying many weapons and I can only assume that it wasn’t his choice to carry a lot of weapons on his back due to the exhaustion on his face. I came to the prediction that Ishmael walked a lot because in the photo, there are holes on the heels of his shoes and the straps are breaking apart.
As a child, Ishmael Beah seemed like he was playful, curious, and adventurous. He had a family that loved him, and he had friends that supported him. Before the war, Ishmael had a childhood that was similar to most of the children in the United States. Unfortunately, the love and support Ishmael grew accustom to quickly vanished. His childhood and his innocence abruptly ended when he was forced to grow up due to the Sierra Leone Civil War. In 1991, Ishmael thought about survival rather than trivial things. Where was he going to go? What was he going to eat? Was he going to make it out of the war alive? The former questions were the thoughts that occupied Ishmaels mind. Despite his efforts, Ishmael became an unwilling participant in the war. At the age of thirteen, he became a
Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, narrates the story of Ishmael’s life as a child soldier in the Sierra Leonean civil war. Ishmael chronicles his journey from a scared, adrift child who lost his family in the war to a brutal child soldier who mercilessly killed many individuals to a guilt stricken rehabilitated teen who slowly learns to overcome his remorse from his past actions. Ishmael’s life as a child soldier first started when the Sierra Leonean army took him and his friends with them to the village, Yele, occupied by army officials and seemingly safe from the rebels. Unfortunately, within a few weeks of their stay, the rebels attacked Yele, and Ishmael and his friends decided to make the choice of becoming a child soldier in order to sustain their slim chances of staying alive. Ishmael’s interaction with violence was very different as a child soldier compared to as a civilian: while he witnessed violent actions before, as a child soldier he was committing them. As his life as a soldier demanded more violence from him, Ishmael sank deeper into the process of dehumanization with his main driving point being the revenge that he sought from the rebels for the deaths of his family and friends. After a few months as a child soldier, Ishmael was brought to the Benin home by UNICEF officials who hoped to rehabilitate the completely dehumanized child soldiers. With the help of Esther, a compassionate nurse, and other staff members in the center, Ishmael was able to ultimately reverse the effects of the war on him. By forgiving himself and the rebels who took away his close ones from him, Ishmael was able to restore his emotion of empathy and become rehabilitated.
In his personal memoir titled “A long way Gone” Ishmael Beah incorporated the concept of family into his personal story. Traveling in a world of his own Beah encountered different events where his approach to family evolved. From losing his important primary family, and establishing close relationships with individuals he met along his journey. Hope, revenge, trust & love were three important key stages discovered as his definition and approach to family changed.
Ishmael was taken from the wild and held captive in a zoo, a circus, and a gazebo. During his time in various types of captivity, Ishmael was able to develop a sense of self and a better understanding of the world around him. Ishmael states that the narrator and those who share the same culture are “captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order live” (Quinn, 15). He goes to explain that releasing humanity from captivity is crucial for survival, but humans are unable to see the bars of the cage. Using the cage as a metaphor, Quinn is referring to human culture and how they do not see the harm it’s causing. As the novel progresses, it elaborates on how culture came about and why certain people inherit certain cultures. Ishmael refers to a story as the explanation of the relationship between humans, the world and the gods. He defines to enact is to live as if the story is a reality. Ishmael suggest that humans are captives of story, comparing them to the people of Nazi Germany who were held captive by Hitler’s
In the A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, a twelve-year-old explains how he used to go on a swim with his friends and his love for rap music and hip-hop dance. When Ishmael and his friends went to visit Mattru Jong, they visited Ishmael's grandparents in Kabati. While staying at the Mattru Jong, they recieved a terrifying news that Mogbwemo was attacked. When messengers warn the townspeople several times that Mattru Jong is going to be attacked, the townspeople fled and hide until time has passed and everyone returned to their daily life. Until, the rebels actually arrive and people run away from the rebels from more than an hour until the rebels stop chasing them.
...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
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.
There are many people that can’t have what you do. When you sit there and think about how poor you are and how much you don’t have you should really be thinking of the people that have even less. Linda Sue Parks was one of the people that did and she wrote a book called A Long Walk to Water which is a true story. In the novel there is a young boy named Salva Dut. Salva Dut was an 11 year old boy who was separated from his family because of a school shooting. This happened in Sudan which is now South Sudan because of war. In hopes that he finds his family again he will walk and walk everyday. Salva also faces many challenging things while he’s walking such as finding food and water, avoiding gunmen, and wild animals. Salva had a lot of accomplishments on his way too like leading 1500 lost boys of Sudan to a refugee camp by the Gilo River, then he goes to America seven years later and lives with a family in New York, and he finds his father many years later and starts a group called Water
Ishmael’s search for revenge ended when he was taken out of the front lines of the war by
A long way gone is the factual story of Ishmael Beah who turn out to be an unenthusiastic boy warrior throughout a 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. Since they planned to come back the following day, they didn’t farewell or communicate with anyone wherever they were going, little they knew that they will certainly not come back to their families. It all started when Gibrilla and Kaloko came home early after school and they brought with them grief-stricken update for the eruption of warfare at the mining area. Amongst the mix-up, viciousness and vagueness of the warfare, Ishmael, Junior and his friends roam from settlem...
Ishmael is a teacher that specializes in captivity. Apart from being a gorilla that has been caged most of his life, Ishmael specializes in the concept of humans and
Ishmael made the story extremely thought provoking. Not only did it change the narrator’s way of life, but it changed most of the readers’ minds as well. Ishmael used many lessons and stories to help get the message across that as a society we had to change our ways. No human can get the knowledge across like Ishmael because most individuals do not understand captivity, the journey through identity, and the different mindset a gorilla has to offer. Ishmael’s significance throughout the novel is extremely powerful and the story wouldn’t be as unique if it had just been another human teaching the story.