In the number one national bestseller “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah, the abuse of guns become extreme. Guns imply control, fear, and power to a point where rebels will taunt the people in order to succeed these tasks. Overthrowing villages, killing innocent residence, and inflicting fear appear in many parts of the biography. While Ishmael was present in a village, “the rebels began shooting their guns at people instead of shooting into the sky. They didn’t want people to abandon the town…” (24). This shows how guns is equivalent to control as the rebels are able to force the inhabitants from fleeing the village. Another example include that “The rebel pushed the old man to the ground, put a gun to his head, and ordered him to get up.”
What can you predict about the story from the back and front cover of the book?
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.
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is a memoir of a young, emotionally distraught child soldier who takes his audience through his mental and physical journey to his eventual escape of the Civil War in Sierra Leone. For the past few days, our World Literature class have been trying to figure out/argue what category A Long Way Gone falls under. In Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried, he distinguishes between two types of stories: (1) stories that need to be real and (2) stories that rely on the emotional truth. To me, A Long Way Gone is a novel that relies on the emotional truth and should be read as such; it relies on the emotions of human beings for the story to be understood as it was written by a boy like one of us. Initially I was not sure what the emotional truth was, so I googled the definition and got that, “an emotional truth is writing in such a way that readers not only learn the facts of an event, but can feel the joy, sorrow, anger, envy, love, hate, poignancy that the participant feels.” And I believe that a story that relies on the emotional truth is not any less significant than stories that strictly state the truth. A story told using emotional truth/validity is a story that, in my opinion, offers more of the real picture than that of a story that doesn’t tug on the emotions of a reader and just blatantly state the true happenings of an event.
The topic of gun control became an element for discussion among Americans in the early 1930s when mob and gang crime was at an all-time high. The term “Gun Control” refers to a set of laws set in p...
Contents INTRODUCTION 2 CHRONOLIGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF EVENTS THAT LEAD TO CONFLICTS 3 CONCLUSION 5 INTRODUCTION An attention-grabbing story of a youngster’s voyage from beginning to end. In “A LONG WAY GONE,” Ishmael Beah, at present twenty six years old, tells a fascinating story he has always kept from everyone. When he was twelve years of age, he escaped attacking the revolutionaries and roamed a land rendered distorted by violence. By thirteen, he’d been chosen by the government, military and Ishmael Beah.
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.
As long as there have been men and women on this planet there has been violence. This is an immutable fact. In all likelihood, there will always be violence within the human race. Robert Heinlein said, "Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms." Indeed this is plausible. The premise of these arguments is that giving a creature with a proven track record of violence a phenomenally powerful tool of destruction is less than wise. As an alternative, this paper proposes to limit access to such powerful devices (semi-automatic firearms) through the use of tracking methods, restricted sales, and heavier penalties for illegal possession of firearms. The firearms most specifically addressed are semi-automatic weapons including repeating rifles and handguns.
In the memoir A Long Way Gone, written by Ishmael Beah, the concept of guns give people power is continuously present in the book. Throughout the story there are situations in which the rebels, who gained weapons, used their newfound power to inflict fear, create chaos, and to take that which is not theirs. The extent of power that guns can is shown when Beah, the author, said, “The soldiers, who somehow anticipated the attack and knew they were outnumbered, left town before the rebels actually came” (23-24). It would be somewhat understandable if the common civilians of the village left before the attack, but the fact that soldiers, the people who are supposed to defend the common folk, fled the town shows how powerful the rebels were seen
Poetry is an expression of a writer 's inner thoughts and underlying affection. Composing a sonnet is all about expressing your inner empathy and challenging your readers to dig deeper into the true meaning of writing. How a poet grows up and the experience he or she has faced in their lifetime is the foundation of their poetry. Benjamin Alire Saenz grew up in New Mexico and was a priest for a few years in his life. His poem To the Desert, has a deeper meaning than what is actually being portrayed. Some readers may assume that it is only about living in the desert and adapting to the environment itself. However, that is not quite the case with this solid piece of writing. Throughout the composition of the poem, metaphors, allusions, theme,
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 “An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit,” by Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, the gorilla teaches the narrator, an anthropologist, that we as humans are anthropocentric when it comes to the natural world. This means that humans think they we are the center or the most important thing in the universe. On one hand, some may argue that the world was made for humans and not for the animals or anything else in society. From this perception, humans think that the world exists to support their species and to meet their needs, meaning that we egocentric. On the other hand, however, others argue that the natural world was not made just for man and that we should care more about other species and the environment. The issue is whether or not the natural world was
Gun control can also be examined with the third perspective in sociology, the conflict theory. Since most of society’s problems are caused by the constant competition of two groups, many can be examined using this micro-level analysis. Even if gun control is enforced people will still continue to rebel and resent the law. With the conflict theory, individuals will always go against authority no matter what the case may be.
In The Way To Rainy Mountain, the author N. Scott Momaday makes a clear use of figurative language throughout the story and descriptive language to describe the nature around them, explains their myths about how their tribe came to be a part of nature, as well as the importance in nature that are a part of the Sundance festival and the tai-me.
This paper explores the issue of mass violence and it elaborates on what the main cause of mass violence is. As a result of weak gun control, mass violence has become an all - too - common occurrence in the United States. Many people believe that there is no need to make the firearm laws stronger, but I disagree. I think that if everyone were to abide by the gun control laws, the mass violence rates would drastically decrease, causing less death and more lives to be saved. Those who put the laws aside and do as they please, are the main cause for the crimes occurring in our nation. If we were to look back at our history, we would see many events where a gun was obtained legally and then that same gun was used as a murder weapon. If the gun