War can affect many people’s lives in a matter of different ways. Whether it be the innocent, or a soldier even as young as twelve it can affect people's, physical, mental, and emotional health. In this novel, named “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael as a twelve year old boy was faced with a civil war in his own country of Sierra Leone, Africa starting in nineteen-ninety one and ending in two-thousand two. In the beginning of the civil war, he had become separated from his family and never saw his mother, father, and brothers ever again. For a few years he was by himself trying to get away from the RUF and government forces because they would raid villages and kill hundreds of innocent people everyday. He could not escape the RUF and
In the beginning of the book when Ishmael, his brother Junior, and his friends were about to leave town for a competition, he stated, “Since we intended to return the next day, we didn’t say goodbye or tell anyone where we were going. We didn’t know that we were leaving home, never to return” (Beah 7). In this civil war, many people did not expect the RUF to invade villages because they would come at random times or some people, such as Ishmael, would think they would never come. Because of this, families were split up and family members were never seen again and this happened to Ishmael and his family. He did not expect the RUF to come to his village so he left his village before the attack without saying goodbye to his family because he thought he would see them again but he never did. When Ishmael had found out about his home village being attacked, he was with his brother and friends, and they had gone to other villages trying to survive, but when the village they were at got attacked, Ishmael stated, “It was during that attack in the village of Kamator that my friends and I were separated. It was the last time I saw Junior, my older brother” (Beah 43). Because of this civil war, Ishmael never got to see his closest friends and older brother ever again. Ishmael was by himself most of the time during this war and many other people, including
When Ishmael was going back through his old memories of being a child soldier in the beginning of the book, he said, “We opened fire until the last living being in the other group fell to the ground. We walked toward the dead bodies, giving each other high fives. The group had consisted of young boys like us, but we didn’t care about them. We took their ammunition, sat on their bodies, and started eating the cooked food they had been carrying” (Beah 19). This quote is showing how Ishmael and his other friends did not care about who they were killing. They had actually felt proud and confident of themselves for killing others and in this example child soldiers around their age. Later in the story when Ishmael was a child soldier for quite some time then, he stated, “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or to be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone” (Beah 126). Ishmael’s thinking was always about killing because that is all he has done for the past two years at that point. Since he was doing that all day for a few years he had gotten used to the fact of being a child soldier and killing people daily, so he had felt no feelings or guilt toward the people he had
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.
Fear, an emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat, a feeling that no one wants to go through on a serious level. Imagine suddenly waking up to the sounds of gunshots and bombs without warning or constantly being surrounded by formidable men bearing guns. These experiences were not unusual for Ishmael Beah, the author of the book A Long Way Gone, and Paul Baumer, the protagonist of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque. Both books are based off a war; however, All Quiet on the Western Front is based off Paul’s involvement in WWI and A Long Way Gone is about Ishmael’s exposure to the civil war within Sierra Leone. Although the books are different in content, they both show
...g that throughout the book, Ishmael is in constant need of a friend to help him in situations like the main plot I mentioned earlier. He is very lucky and makes many of those friends he needs by the end of the book.
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
...ircumstances as he did, believe that revenge is not good and it keeps on going if no one stops the process. Overall, Ishmael eventually learned that revenge does not solve anything and seeking revenge just results in a longer war sustained by the counterproductive concept of vengeance. Additionally, Ishmael learned that by constantly thinking about his culpability, he was just bringing more harm to himself and in the process was unable to create any progress in his own life. Ishmael eventually realized that merely reflecting on his actions did not do anything and to fix and prevent the problems he faced, he would have to take initiative to reach out to the people who could help. By utilizing the idea of forgiveness, Ishmael learned that he could let go of the huge mountain of stress that was bringing him down and prevented him from overcoming the effects of the war.
Ishmael Beah’s first transition on his approach to family began with a strong sense of hope. Consequently, after the separation of his mother, father, and older brother his life completely changed. When he began to take his journey Beah hoped to find his family and survive the war together. In his memoir, Beah demonstrated the idea of hope when he came across a childhood memory that impacted his life. As he walked alone in the forest Beah remembered his father’s significant words of advice that motivated him to find hope and purpose. With this idea in mind, his father once said, “If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen” (2007, P. 54). For Ishmael, his father, mother, and
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.
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.
Ishmael kills people without it being a big problem or deal. He was forced and threatened. If not then he would be killed. First, he was terrified to see people being killed. In the book, Ishmael quotes “My hand began trembling uncontrollably…” This shows that Ishmael is being aware of his surroundings and of himself. This is important because it shows how Ishmael feels before he and his
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’s search for revenge ended when he was taken out of the front lines of the war by
Since they planned to come back the following day, they didn’t farewell or communicate with anyone wherever they were going, little did they know that they would certainly not come back to their families. It all started when Gibrilla and Kaloko came home early after school and brought with them a grief-stricken update on 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 settlement to settlement in quest of food and accommodation. On their run, they had seen a lot of massacres and bereavements such as at twilight they saw a lady carrying her dead child on her back, seemingly, the child was shot when the lady ran for her life because blood was dripping from her behind making a stream. In chapter 4, things rapidly changed because even owning any amount of money was useless as there was nowhere to buy food from, rather it lead to them stealing people’s food while they were asleep.
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
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...
War has always been something to be dreaded by people since nothing good comes from it. War affects people of all ages, cultures, races and religion. It brings change, destruction and death and these affect people to great extents. “Every day as a result of war and conflict thousands of civilians are killed, and more than half of these victims are children” (Graca & Salgado, 81). War is hard on each and every affected person, but the most affected are the children.