A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is a memoir of a boy solider, which uses many miserable stories to show the barbarism of the war and to motivate readers to pay more attention to the people who need help. Beah is a young solider who attended the war at age twelve. According to Beah’s description, the war started on a sunny afternoon without any predictions; suddenly the gunshots began and all the civilians ran into different directions, including Beah’s family. Beah got lost his family members after the first bomb explosion happened in his village. Having the determination of seeing his family again, Beah, a 12 years old boy, starts his journey of finding his family. Although Beah had been through lots of painful memories during the war, Beah …show more content…
The war caused many people to lose their hope by killing their family and robbing all the things they used have, but there were exist small numbers of people who still keep hope in mind, and their hope can help others to change. During the war, many people lose their family, which symbolizes hope. For those survivors, the impacts of the war for them are inevitable because the loss of the family members can never be returned. However, those survivors can inherit those past people’ wish to live on, to carry their hope for the future. It has many scenes in the book that strangers help homeless people who lose their family to regain their hope. Take, one example, a woman embraced a man who wanted to commit suicide after he watched all of his family being killed by a bomb. That woman came close to the man and cried with him, told him “ at least he would have the chance to bury them. He would always know where they were laid to rest” (Beah, 13). The society still exist some positive energy during and after the war. Love and support become a force to unite the whole civilians together to reduce the negative impacts caused by the war. When people lose their hope, there is always someone who will help them or listening their difficulties. In Beah’s second rehabilitation, Beah’s uncle found him and wanted to adopt him, even thought he knew all the things about Beah’s killing experiences. Beah’s uncle told Beah “ we cannot go back. But we can start from here” (Beah 172). The impact of the war can never be fixed. However, the future can be changed if people can spend more time on helping those survivors. It is never too late to get back hope. The war cannot totally destroy human’ hope as long as someone still keep hope in his/her minds. An individual’s power may be very unnoticeable, but it makes effect on others’ heart. A small thing tends to get a big
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.
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.
The dramatic realization of the fact that the war will affect a member of the Chance family is apparent in this quote. The amount of sorrow and emotions felt by the Chance family, and for that matter, all families who had children, brothers, husbands, or fathers, drafted into what many felt was a needless war. The novel brings to life what heartache many Americans had to face during the Vietnam era, a heartache that few in my generation have had the ability to realize.
Life is made up of decisions and choices. Every single day, people make numerous decisions, some big and some small. Many choices can impact your entire life while others, like what you eat for breakfast, aren’t as important. However, all of your choices build the track for your life and make you who you are. The choices you make can be greatly impacted by your surroundings and environment. They are also made based on your values and beliefs. In the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael is a young fourteen year old boy thrown in the middle of Sierra Leone's civil war. During the war, Ishmael is given a series of obstacles where he is required to make important life choices that would impact his life greatly. At one part of Ishmael's
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.
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.
The war in Sierra Leone lasted eleven years and resulted in mass murder, destruction, and mainly, loss of innocence. This war impacted nearly everyone in the country, however its specific damage on the children of Sierra Leone is a tragedy that haunts the victims to this day. The Rebels killed and tortured thousands of innocent people and destroyed villages throughout the country. Boys as young as twelve were forced to form an army and fight against the rebels. Ishmael Beah, a young boy living amongst this war, tells his story in the book A Long Way Gone. He explains the gory and disturbing details of his life as a boy soldier. As the young boys were brainwashed into killing, the women and young girls of the country were being raped,
Children exposed to violence within their communities are left with emotions of hopelessness, insecurity, and doubt. Historical events such as the war on terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the tragic events of September 11th have had a detrimental effect on the entire nation, including the children. Although every child is not directly affected by the effects of war, it somehow has an emotional effect on all. The involvement of a nation in war affects every individual differently, whether it is out of fear, anger, doubt, hope, or love. In the short novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he narrates the story by telling his own involvement in the Civil War in Sierra Leone as a young boy and the many issues he faces while living in horror.
War has been a consistent piece of mankind 's history. It has significantly influenced the lives of individuals around the globe. The impacts are amazingly adverse. In the novel, “The Wars,” by Timothy Findley, Soldiers must shoulder compelling weight on the warzone. Such weight is both family and the country weight. Many individuals look at soldiers for hop and therefore, adding load to them. Those that cannot rationally beat these difficulties may create Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tragically, some resort to suicide to get away from their insecurities. Troops, notwithstanding, are not by any means the only ones influenced by wars; relatives likewise encounter mental hardships when their friends and family are sent to war. Timothy Findley
Every bomb that falls blossoms new hope in the heart’s of the Jews because it means that the possible idea of liberty may be turning into reality. Again, without the hope in this situation there would be no will to prevail. In another instance in the text, the words that are spoken “‘Perhaps the Russians will arrive before…’” (pg. 81) This situation takes place near the end of the book and is a very crucial part of understanding the hope throughout this memoir. Perhaps, is the key word in this specific example because it rings with hope, if you believe even in the slightest something good will happen, you will believe that it is possible, your actions will show your willingness to prevail. Not only does this show how hope makes the reality of surviving bearable, but it also shows how when hope is prevalent in a community, it is easier to be willing to prevail. There is good in having hope in the sense that it can make an ideal of surviving into more of a reality, therefore making it easier to prevail. Throughout Night there are many situations where this is very relevant and although it is very hard to look for the better times in a memoir like this, it is
“Every war is everyone’s war”... war will bring out the worst in even the strongest and kindest people. The book tells about how ones greed for something can destroy everything for both people and animals leaving them broken beyond repair, leaving them only with questions… Will they ever see their family again? Will they ever experience what it’s like to
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.