Capturing children and turning them into child soldiers is an increasing epidemic in Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah, author of the memoir A Long Way Gone, speaks of his time as a child soldier. Beah was born in Sierra Leone and at only thirteen years old he was captured by the national army and turned into a “vicious soldier.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) During the time of Beah’s childhood, a civil war had erupted between a rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front and the corrupt Sierra Leone government. It was during this time when the recruitment of child soldiers began in the war. Ishmael Beah recalls that when he was only twelve years old his parents and two brothers were killed by the rebel group and he fled his village. While he and his friends were on a journey for a period of months, Beah was captured by the Sierra Leonean Army. The army brainwashed him, as well as other children, with “various drugs that included amphetamines, marijuana, and brown brown.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) The child soldiers were taught to fight viciously and the effects of the drugs forced them to carry out kill orders. Beah was released from the army after three years of fighting and dozens of murders. Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child soldier expresses the deep struggle between his survival and any gleam of hope for the future.
A child soldier is defined as someone who is under eighteen years of age and is actively fighting in war. It is estimated by UNICEF that some 300,000 child soldiers, both boys and girls, are currently fighting in wars. A majority of children are turned into child soldiers through recruitment or force while others join because they live in a poverty stricken area or a war zone. (UNICEF) Most child soldiers range ...
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...sed to say, "If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.” (p. 54) Beah had to keep the constant faith that there would be hope for a better day and his father’s words help him to remember that not all hope is lost.
After Beah became a speaker for the United Nations, he spoke that he “joined the army to avenge the deaths of (his) family.” (p. 199) Beah soon realized that the revenge he was seeking against the rebels that he believed killed his family would never come to an end. He was in a war within himself and it wasn’t going to end until he came to accept that he was done fighting. The atrocities that Ishmael Beah and the hundreds of thousands of child soldiers around the world have witnessed are memories that will be instilled in their minds forever.
During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o...
In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Beah tells of his past in Sierra Leone as a boy soldier. As a child in the war, Beah and his fellow soldiers committed many acts of violence, including murder. This raises the question as to whether or not child soldiers should be held accountable for their actions. The answer to this question is no, they should not be, because as children, they are easier to manipulate, and their minds have become addled by much exposure to drug use and sleep deprivation.
As defined by Timothy Webster, author of Babes with Arms: International Law and Child Soldiers, a child soldier is “any person under the age of eighteen who is or has been associated with any kind of regular or irregular armed group, including those who serve as porters, spies, cooks, messengers and including girls recruited for sexual purposes (Webster, 2007, pp.230). As this definition reveals, a child soldier is more than simply a child with a gun. It is estimated that there are approximately 300,000 children under the age of 18, being used as soldiers in 33 conflicts currently, and this figure continues to rise (Webster, 2007, pp.227). Similarly, in 1999 it was estimated that more than 120,000 children, under the age of 18, were used as soldiers to fight ...
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 aspects of war, it somehow has an emotional effect on all. The involvement of a nation with 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 young boy and the many issues he faces while living in horror. Also, author Garbarino points out in his book Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment in the chapter involving the security of children that:
Clearly, the Sierra Leone army knows what strategies in order to recruit children into becoming soldiers through manipulations. For example, a long way gone, written by Ishmael Beah shows the process of a boy being manipulated into the Sierra Leone army, but the world has been corrupted for any years, and needless to say, enough is enough. Ishmael's decision have shown the importance of Maslow’s Hierarchy, and the ability to live life without manipulations and eventually reach the final goal a person
This is a book review of a novel called A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. The book was published on February 13th, 2007 by Douglas McIntyre and it has got 229 pages. The genre of this book is what is called a memoir which is basically a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private that took place in the author's life. A Long Way Gone is the true story of Ishmael Beah, who becomes an unwilling boy soldier during a civil war in Sierra Leone. My recommendation of this book is that it’s so fascinating and unique; rather than portraying one side in a positive light, it shows that there is no right side. Since the book is told from the point of view of a child soldier, you can tell what his real beliefs were at the time instead of the beliefs we assume they have.
There are thousands of soldiers that are under the age of 18 around the world. Many kidnapped and are forced into war. They are forced to do brutal things like kill their friends and family. They are also brainwashed by being drugged so they can kill in the war.
In the story, Ishmael Beah states "When I was very little, my father used to say, if you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen." For example, he remembers these encouraging words when he is
When we look back to our childhood, we have memories of playgrounds, games, our friends and our family, not in our darkest nightmares we could imagine ourselves fighting in warfare. There are about 300,000 children young as nine years old involved in armed conflicts all around the world today. This problem is most common in Africa. Ishmael Beah was a boy soldier and now at the age of twenty-six tells a gripping story. At the age of twelve, he left his home and family because of the rebel attacks and wandered a land that kept him away from violence. At the age of thirteen he had become a soldier. He saw his childhood pass by him and became capable of terrible acts. At some point he was released by the army and sent to a rehabilitation center of UNICEF, there he had to struggle with his humanity, which was suppressed till then, and move back in the world of citizens. But how did all of these events made him who he is now? How did this part of his life shaped him to be the man he is now? These events that took place so early in his life were factors that influenced his personality, ideas and dreams. Leaving his home and family, becoming a soldier and then ending in the rehabilitation center defined Ishael Beah's character and personality.
Most would agree that murdering somebody before even being old enough to purchase a firearm is ridiculous, but the protagonists in both A Long Way Gone and All Quiet on the Western Front had to just that without even blinking an eye. Unfortunately, child soldiers have existed for many generations, and there is not much being done to stop it from happening. War has existed for centuries, but the use of children has proven to cause serious mental and physical illnesses that they will not recover from for the rest of their often shortened lives. Paul Baumer from All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and Ishmael Beah from his memoir A Long Way Gone are forced to grow up and act much older and much more mature than they actually are as a
Child soldier is a worldwide issue, but it became most critical in the Africa. Child soldiers are any children under the age of 18 who are recruited by some rebel groups and used as fighters, cooks, messengers, human shields and suicide bombers, some of them even under the aged 10 when they are forced to serve. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers. Most of them are abducted or recruited by force, and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death. As society breaks down during conflict, leaving children no access to school, driving them from their homes, or separating them from family members, many children feel that rebel groups become their best chance for survival. Others seek escape from poverty or join military forces to avenge family members who have been killed by the war. Sometimes they even forced to commit atrocities against their own family (britjob p 4 ). The horrible and tragic fate of many unfortunate children is set on path of war murders and suffering, more nations should help to prevent these tragedies and to help stop the suffering of these poor, unfortunate an innocent children.
The lack of parenting during the civil war in Sierra Leone is a major cause that leads to the use of child soldiers during the war. The outbreak of the war in Sierra Leone caused everyone to run for their lives, leaving behind loved ones. Due to the sudden outbreak, many children were split apart from their parents leaving them abandoned. Wen the war began “fathers had come running from their workplaces, only to stand in front of their empty houses with no indication of where their families had gone. Mothers wept as they ran towards schools, rivers and water taps to look for their children. Children ran home to look for their parents who were wandering the streets in search of them. As the gunfire intensified, people gave up looking for their loved ones and ran out of town” (Beah 9). Ishmael realizes that he will be alone without his family and begins to feel as if a part of his is lost. As for the separation of families, the children in Sierra Leone were forced to make their own sensible decisions in order to stay alive during that time. Young children who lost their families were brainwashed into believing that fighting in the war was the right thing to do. Correspondingly, the lack of parenting during this difficult...
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
The 2006 American-German film Blood Diamond and the 2006 Nigerian novel by Adichie Half of a Yellow Sun both have scenes that show the representation of the behaviour of child soldiers. Despite on the surface they share some similarities, the film and the novel approach the inhuman conscription differently. Whereas the scene from the book is showing how the children are kidnapped from the streets to become soldiers in Nigeria, the scene from the movie elaborates on how the children are forced to become soldiers in Sierra Leone. The scene in Nigeria happens in 1960s, whereas the actions in the film Blood Diamond take place thirty years later. The analysis of these two scenes will present the different ways of child soldiers’ portrayal.
In the memoir of Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Beah states that his life’s journey has been a huge obstacle, but has learned to overcome that struggle by venting while the two contradictory sides continue their battling. Beah accomplishes his goal of explaining to the reader his point of view through the use of rhetorical questions, scenic narration, and parallelism. Ishmael Beah’s apparent purpose is to share personal accounts of his life with his fellow country men, in a country where war affects people to a level beyond the imagination. He is able to apply his purpose using a grotesque and bitter tone. Beah approaches his audience of ordinary people in this manner in order to vent his feelings about war by sharing life experiences with his reader.