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Recommended: Child soldiers
Child Soldiers, a major problem in Africa with an estimate of 120,000 children that are currently used as combatants or support personnel to this day. Africa has the highest rate of child soldier use and those enlisted ages are also decreasing, army groups in Africa are manipulating children to be part of a relentless army slowly taking away their childhood after each day. Two stories tell a tale of a child soldier, Ishmael Beah, the writer of the memoir “A Long Way Gone” tells a story of his time as a child soldier and the Netflix Original film and War film Beasts of No Nation tells a story of a young child named Agu becomes a child soldier. These two stories will tell a similar tale of a child’s experience in the war and how it has slowly …show more content…
ruined their lives. Both stories have a reason on why they have joined the army as a child soldier. Ishmael Beah says that he joined “army really because of the loss of my family and starvation. I wanted to avenge the deaths of my family” he says this because he knows that the only way to survive in the war is to not run away from it, but to just defend himself. When he was running away from the war food would be a difficult thing to come by so he said “I also had to get some food to survive, and the only way to do that was to be part of the army.” Before Ishmael got himself into the army, he once had the opportunity to finally see his family after the separation, but before he did so the village got burnt down along with his family. So Ishmael had no other choice, but to join the army or die of hunger. Agu in the film Beasts of No Nation joins the rebellion army. The Commandant told Agu “...do you want to be fighting the army that is killing your father?” aside from the limited english of the Commandant, Agu was just manipulated to join the army out of revenge against the government army. To end this piece of evidence, both Ishmael and Agu has a reason on why they joined the army as a child, they were both manipulated and/or driven to join out of survival or revenge. The moment of losing something that they hold close to them are both present in these two stories, Ishmael experiences most of his friends getting killed right in front of him and Agu sees Strika dying slowly.
These may sound like differences, but the similarity between these two is that they both lost a friend due to the war. Ishmael lost his friends in the middle of a gunfight he said “every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two young lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people. I shot everything that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed another strategy”, here we see that Ishmael is furious about losing his two friends. Agu however, his friend Strika dies in front of him by an injury that Strika had. Agu having no way to treat Strika’s wound, he had no other choice but to carry him to safety, but before they made it to safety Strika dies. And having Strika being Agu’s only friend in the army, he has lost everything just like Ishmael. Not only did Agu and Ishmael lost their friends, but they both lost their family as well. Ishmael’s entire family is killed in a fire caused by rebels and Agu’s father and brother was killed by execution by the government army. In spite of revenge, Agu is driven to kill an enemy by the Commandant, after the prisoner To close this topic both Ishmael and Agu lost everything that they care about, they lost their family and friends because of the rebellion taking
place. The last similarity to these two stories is that both children get introduced to drug use. In the moments where Agu’s squad is not in combat and when Ishmael was still at base. Ishmael was given pills similar to cocaine and after several doses he says ”as I had become addicted to them. They gave me a lot of energy.” Agu was given brown-brown through a cut in the forehead. Their comrades made them try the drug called brown-brown, a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder, after each use the user would get a sudden burst of energy to intensify combat in a gunfight. Not only were they introduced to brown-brown, but they were also introduced to Marijuana, a type of cannabis, after each use the user would have an increased awareness of sensation and distortions in perception of time higher doses can cause hallucinations. With Ishmael and Agu’s drug use, they have become drug addicts at a very young age. And it has deprived them of emotions basically desensitizing them. Later they both get sent to rehab where they get their addiction to drugs cured. Now that all three similarities of the War film Beasts of No Nation and the memoir written by Ishmael Beah “A Long Way Gone” has been stated
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 the novel Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn, the narrator has spent most of his life looking for a teacher so he can learn to save the world. When the narrator was reading the paper he found an ad searching for a student interested in saving the world. After arriving at the address he finds a gorilla named Ishmael, who communicates telepathically. (Quinn, 1995)
Ishmael was a normal 12 year old boy in a small village in Sierra Leone when his life took a dramatic turn and he was forced into a war. War has very serious side effects for all involved and definitely affected the way Ishmael views the world today. He endured and saw stuff that most people will never see in a lifetime let alone as a young child. Ishmael was shaped between the forced use of drugs, the long road to recovery and the loss of innocence of his
In the novel, Ishmael, David Quinn describes the difference in evolution between two groups of humans, the Takers and the Leavers. In the well known stories in the book of Genesis, when God created the world, God also created man. According to the Takers, God appointed man as ruler of this world. Ishmael’s reinterpretation of Genesis highlights how the Takers’ story immerged and how they fail to realize the destruction they are causing. Ishmael starts describing the Takers story by defining what a story is and how to enact one. A story is a, “scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods” (41). Ishmael defines enacting a story as “to live so as to make the story a reality,” (41) or living the story to make it come true. Ishmael describes
During the war, there were two prevalent groups. These were the army and the rebels, both of which offered Ishmael a questionable future. As we know, Ishmael ended up joining the army. About his experience in the army, Ishmael says “I had my gun now, and as the corporal always said “This gun is your source of power in these times.It will protect you and provide you all you need, if you know how to use it well.”” (p.124). This type of thinking is in short, self-destructive to Ishmael. It would mean that he would either end up dead during the war, or if he was to survive, it would be very unlikely for him to be rehabilitated because he had been so reliant on his gun during the war. In addition to this, it would leave Ishmael in a precarious state when the war ended if he had not been rehabilitated, since the only thing he knew to do for years was to kill. However, since he was able to be rehabilitated, he was able to conform to society once more. This, unfortunately, could have been prompted once again near the end of the book when history repeats itself when the AFRC took over Sierra Leone. “The entire nation crumbled into a state of lawlessness. I hated what was happening. I couldn’t return to my previous live.”. Once again, war comes knocking on Ishmael’s front door, and this time around Ishmael knows what war is like and what he is going to experience again. Ishmael was
The R.U.F., however, was not alone in servicing children as their own messengers of evil, the military group countering their acts of violence also had children fighting their battles. A Long Way Gone and The Bite of the Mango are eye-opening books because they give various people all over the world a glimpse into the horrors kids in Africa were facing on a daily basis. However different Mariatu Kamara and Ishmael Beah’s experiences were regarding their journeys and disabilities, they both exhibited the same extraordinary resilience in the end to better themselves, create futures they could be proud of, and make the best with what the war left them.
Ishmael starts his journey with a will to escape and survive the civil war of Sierra Leone in order to reunite with his mom, dad, and younger siblings, who fled their home when his village was attacked by rebels. Having only his older brother, who he escaped with, and a few friends by his side Ishmael is scared, but hopeful. When the brothers are captured by rebels, Ishmael’s belief in survival is small, as indicated by his fallible survival tactics when he “could hear the gunshots coming closer…[and] began to crawl farther into the bushes” (Beah 35). Ishmael wants to survive, but has little faith that he can. He is attempting to survive by hiding wherever he can- even where the rebels can easily find him. After escaping, Ishmael runs into a villager from his home tells him news on the whereabouts of his family. His optimism is high when the villager, Gasemu, tells Ishmael, “Your parents and brothers wil...
Ishmael begins when the nameless narrator finds a newspaper ad that reads: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person" (4).
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.
Life in America for Baba and Amir is much different than their life in Afghanistan. Specifically, Amir adapts well to America. He completes high school and college. Furthermore, he follows his dream of becoming a writer. In American Amir becomes a young man who marries Soraya. The reader witnesses a kinder, non-vindictive Amir.
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...
The movie The Kite Runner is based on the book and it contains both subtle and explicit differences as all books and movies do. Both the book and the movie have very compelling and moralistic themes though at times the movie’s themes seem limited. The themes presented throughout the movie and the book are penance, loyalty, prejudice, religion and growing up. The characterization, overall plot of the movie and the setting of the book seem to be consistent with each other though at times they both may vary both slightly and drastically.
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.
Though the use of child soldiers is a global concern, the highest numbers have been reported mainly in Africa and Asi...
A Long Way Gone is the memoir of Ishmael Beah about his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. As I read through chapter after chapter of horror filled tales where Ishmael and his friends get shot and beaten and tortured and have to survive the war, I reached the point