A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah follows the journey of a twelve year old boy as a child soldier for the RUF, or Revolutionary United Front. Through the novel we’re brought along on Ishmael’s journey as he changes from the normal, adventurous young boy, to a mad killing machine, and then rehabilitated by the UNICEF. After his “realization,” Ishmael uses his past to educate and help others on the issue of the use of children in war. The story begins two years before Beah is forced to be a soldier when he is ten years old. Ishmael leads a fairly normal life while living in Sierra Leone. He frequently spends time with his friends, Talloi and Mohamed and his brother, Junior, learn and practicing rap music. He comes home everyday to study rap lyrics …show more content…
On their way to Mogbwemo, where the show will be, they decide to stop in Kabati where they spend the night with their friend Khalilou. Ishmael and Junior also take some time to visit their grandmother, Mamie Kpana.
The next day, the boys are notified by Khalilou that the RUF will invade Mattru Jong next and that their village was just attacked. The boys are given little information about the attack and have no idea if their family is safe. The boys decide that the best option is to return to Mattru Jong. Once Ishmael and his friends make it back the rebels attack their village. The boys are able to escape however, they haven’t eaten in some time and must find a way to get food.
This chapter focuses in on the true vulnerability of the boys. Having gone so long without food the boys know that they should just get money from Khalilou’s house. However, when they try to find food to buy with their money no one is willing to give up their food. As a result, they boys end up stealing food from a little boy.They’re forced to go against the values they were raised
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Before they make it to the village, they boys are captured by the RUF. The rebels of the RUF don’t waste time and begin separating the boys. Fortunately, Ishmael and Junior are able to escape when an unknown source fires a gun from a within the jungle. The boys continue on their journey but are stopped by village guards and taken to their chief. After a village boy recognizes Ishmael and his friends. The chief offers the boys food and shelter. They decline however as they believe that this village will get attacked as well. The boys continue on to the next village. There, they find work on a banana plantation but eventually, it’s attacked and they’re given a choice. They can either leave the village or join forces with the military.
Being a soldier, Ishmael is forced to commit horrendous crimes. He’s forced to do drugs like cocaine and marijuana and watch war-filled movies. After each invasion the boys are rewarded for their killings.
Ishmael is rescued by UNICEF after three years. However, he struggles to escape his world of, “kill or be killed.” Ester however, a UNICEF nurse, uses Ishmael’s love for music to desensitise him. Each time she sees him, she gives him a new cassette tape to listen to. Each time, he opens up more and reveals chilling stories from his
Throughout the book the audience has seen Ishmael go through adventure and sorrow. In the novel Ishmael is forced to go to war at age thirteen, but what keeps him going were his grandmother's wise words. His grandmother was the one who told him powerful lessons that he could use in real life. These lesson that Ishmael is keeping him grounded is not only from his grandmother but also from his friends. Lessons that were seen by the readers are “wild pigs”, “Bra Spider”, and the story about the moon.
As a child, Ishmael Beah seemed like he was playful, curious, and adventurous. He had a family that loved him, and he had friends that supported him. Before the war, Ishmael had a childhood that was similar to most of the children in the United States. Unfortunately, the love and support Ishmael grew accustom to quickly vanished. His childhood and his innocence abruptly ended when he was forced to grow up due to the Sierra Leone Civil War. In 1991, Ishmael thought about survival rather than trivial things. Where was he going to go? What was he going to eat? Was he going to make it out of the war alive? The former questions were the thoughts that occupied Ishmaels mind. Despite his efforts, Ishmael became an unwilling participant in the war. At the age of thirteen, he became a
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.
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.
Ishmael, Junior, Ishmael’s brother, and their friends kept walking for days and began to be very hungry. The only way to get was to scavenge cassava and fruit. They decided to reenter to Mattru Jong to get their hidden money. Even though there are rebels lingering in Mattru Jong, the boys manage to get their hidden money and escape except for one boy who alerted the guards. But, they found out that the marketplace has stopped selling food.
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.
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...
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.
In language of the sort one might expect from a well educated man speaking with a friend, Ishmael told Quinn the story of his life. A large portion of it was spent in captivity, before a wealthy elderly man befriended and educated him. At the end of Ishmael's tale, Quinn was still somewhat befuddled.
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.
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...
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...
The mother realizes then that the young boys, the future "Generals" who will soon live as men do "playing war", are far from innocent. Her rite of passage is a complete and sad transition from the mother of a child that she has some control over to the parent of an independent man, who will make his own choices and fight his own battles.