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Prejudice in the US
Prejudices and discriminations in today's society
Negative effects of war on society
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Recommended: Prejudice in the US
Six billion people, six billion unique beings, yet so many of them are unfairly grouped together based off of unfair, arbitrarily selected parallels. In common mans’ terms, prejudice is an illogical, and disgusting aspect of the human syndrome. Ishmael Beah, and Mariatu Kamara, both child survivors of the Sierra Leone war, are familiar with prejudice on a very personal level. Beah, a young boy, and eventual soldier during the war, experiences wildly different prejudice than Mariatu, a young girl, and mother, during the country’s bloody conflict. Though both experience, and practice, unfair prejudice, Beah’s experience was far more negative and destructive than Kamara’s. Child soldiers, such as Beah, are a topic of extreme moral controversy, but in his Journal on Military Ethics, Dan Zupan says it best: That the child posed a real threat is undeniable. It is reasonable to conclude that if someone raises a weapon, aims it at you, then cocks the weapon, that he plans to shoot you. Since the person is doing this in a hostile environment where people have been shooting at you routinely, the conclusion seems especially warranted. In fact, it seems unreasonable, irresponsible, even negligent, not to fire upon this threat. (Zupan 1) Beah never carries a weapon when he enters small villages for the first time, yet after witnessing so many children perform this act villagers almost routinely he is a potential killer. Villagers had grown acustomed to young boys routinely shooting at them. Even after being fed by an individual of a village for weeks, Beah and his friends are still almost executed based solely on speculation (Beah 66). Just because he is a twelve year old boy, all of the natives of Beah’s own home country as... ... middle of paper ... ...his own tribesmen at gunpoint Beah, still finds a way to be emotionless and point the gun back at them when he is given the opportunity. He could not let his pre conceived notions of the enemy go away so easily. Kamara at least is able to sympathize with beggars when she sees them in London despite how much more luxurious their lives were compared to hers. It may seem easy to try and organize the 6 billion humans that coexist on Earth, but it is just not possible; prejudice is has no place on this earth for it accomplishes nothing. Works Cited Kamara, Mariatu, and Susan McClelland. The Bite of the Mango. [Toronto]: Annick, 2008. Print. Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print. Zupan, Dan. "THE CHILD SOLDIER: NEGLIGENT RESPONSE TO A THREAT." Host. EBSCO, Dec. 2011. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
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.
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 to 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 affects of war.
I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge..” (199). At the UN, he speaks with many children who had parallel encounters in their own countries. Beah apprehends that he is not alone. After years of observing and instigating futile deaths, Beah finally values his own life. Nonetheless, while for the most part the tone was uplifting there were still reminders that Beah’s past will continue to haunt his present and future. Beah remains having nightmares and flashbacks. In addition, he does not completely open up to his family about what he had encountered and endured. Beah says, “They wanted to know about me, and I wasn’t ready to tell them.” (184). No matter how much support he may have, it does not erase the ghastly actions he has witnessed and endured and this confirms he is still fighting inner demons. This shows the effect the war has on people and Beah was trying to bring awareness to that by his
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.
Kamara and Beah’s journeys were notably different, starting with their vantage points of early involvement in the war. They both grew up in traditional African villages and were traveling home from neighboring villages when they first encountered rebels. They both also knew about the threat of the rebels, Kamara’s village was used to hearing that the rebels were on their way and they would regularly abandon their homes to find safety in the forest. In fact, they became so accustomed to leaving their homes for the forest that they had bags of food at the ready for any sudden rebel appearance (Kamara 22).... ...
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.
The first reason these kids shouldn’t be prosecuted or punished in any way is because it wasn’t their choice to be a soldier to begin with. According to Child Soldiers, Prosecution, most kids were forced to fight and had no choice of weather to enlist or not. There are about 200,000 child soldiers worldwide state's Armed and Underage, (Gettleman) and these kids are doing things their adolescent brains
As Garbarino recognizes, the effects of war and such violence is something that sticks with a child and remains constant in their everyday lives. The experiences that children face involving war in their communities and countries are traumatic and long lasting. It not only alters their childhood perspectives, but it also changes their reactions to violence over time. Sadly, children are beginning to play more of a major role in wars in both the United States and other countries.... ...
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
In order to understand the effects that come with being a child soldier, one must first understand how a child ends up in such a position. To three teenage boys living in a small Indian village, the hope of a better life for themselves and their families as well as the affirmation of employment seemed promising. So pr...
Forced to become a child soldier, Beah experiences many horrific and life changing things. Among these, the drastic cultural changes that occurred as a result of the war. The increased western influence in the region only advanced the societal changes. In the memoir, Beah explains the significance of western culture and both the positive and negative effects it has on him and his peers. On one side, western values and items were beneficial to Beah and his peers in the sense that the cassettes Beah carried around with him saved his life on multiple occasions.
In the pursuit of safety, acceptance, and the public good, many atrocities have been committed in places such as Abu Ghraib and My Lai, where simple, generally harmless people became the wiling torturers and murderers of innocent people. Many claim to have just been following orders, which illustrates a disturbing trend in both the modern military and modern societies as a whole; when forced into an obedient mindset, many normal and everyday people can become tools of destruction and sorrow, uncaringly inflicting pain and death upon the innocent.
So the harsh discipline and the threat of death continue to underscore the training programs of almost all child soldier groups. Works Cited Singer, P. W. Peter Warren: Children at war. New York : Pantheon Books, c2005. Eichstaedt, Peter H., 1947- First kill your family. Chicago, Ill. :
Ishmael Beah had a broken family, with divorced parents, living with his younger brother, Ibrahim, his older brother, Junior, along with his mother, and had slim to none communication with his father due to his stepmom. “I had not seen him for a while, as another stepmom had destroyed our relationship.” (10) Before gaining knowledge of any type of war approaching his village, Ishmael, Junior, and they’re mutual friend Talloi left town on a voyage to participate in a talent show in the town of Mattru Jong, where the boys would perform a dance routine set to a track of American rap songs they obtained on a cassette. Once they discovered that their village had been under attack by rebels, who often carve the initials ‘RUF’, which stood for Revolutionary United Front, they quickly scurried back to their village in hopes of coming in contact with their family members. Talloi exclaimed, “We must go back and see if we can find our families before it is too late.” Unfortunately the boys were too late, and their families had fled in attempts to survive. Ishmael, and Junior were accompanied with four close friends whose bond...
Throughout the world, people have always and will always judge each other based on their skin tone, their accent, their home country or other obvious features that we immediately see or hear about them. We often formulate our opinions of these people based on our first impressions of them. In 2009, Civil rights activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses her time on her Ted-Talk to deliver her resonating speech “The Danger of a Single Story.” During her world-renowned speech, Adichie discusses human relationships, how we, as humans, interact with one another and treat each other. Adichie establishes her argument with one powerful metaphor describing common stereotypes as ‘single stories’ to demonstrate how people are affected by being judged based