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Essay on Sierra Leone civil war
The wars loss of innocence
Essay on Sierra Leone civil war
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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.
The transition of Ishmael Baeh, from innocent child to a soldier with the blood of his countrymen on his hands, is chronicled in his memoir through the usage of flashbacks that explain his memories. In the beginning of the memo...
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...rough many difficult trials and tribulations that resulted in his loss of innocence after he became a part of the child army in Sierra Leone. Those experiences caused for him, like the other members of the child army, to change physically because of his drug addiction, psychologically because of his repressed memories, and emotionally, from the desensitization to warfare and death that was a part of his training. This caused for Ishmael to transform from a young innocent boy to a killing machine exploited by his military officials. Ishmael was able to convey his loss of innocence in his memoir through the use of dialogue, first-person narration, and by telling of memories he had through flashbacks. The loss of innocence tied into the title of the memoir because emotionally, physically, and psychologically, he was a long way gone from the boy he was before the army.
From many dark to happy times that were never ending. Ishmael Beah examines his life with different tones that enhanced the effect of the story through many intriguing events. From happy occasions to horrendous times of war, with the rebel attack on his home village, to losing his family and being forced to fight the rebels as an army soldier. Beah started out with suspenseful and terrifying tones when he was separated from family and friends when the war started and had to survive on his own. Then the tone changed to dark, life-threatening, and dismal when he reluctantly was in the army killing rebels and given drugs to cope and continue killing. In conclusion, the tone was pleased, satisfied, and peaceful when he was rehabilitated out of the army and went to New York City where he was adopted and could be a kid
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
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
Throughout the course of this novel, Ishmael Beah keeps the readers on the edge of their seat by incorporating interchanging tones. At the beginning of the novel, the tone can be depicted as naïve, for Beah was unaware to what was actually occurring with the rebels. Eventually, the tone shifts to being very cynical and dark when he depicts the fighting he has endured both physically and mentally. However, the most game changing tone is towards the end of the novel in chapters nineteen and twenty. His tone can be understood as independent or prevailing. It can be portrayed as independent because Beah learns how to survive on his own and to take care of himself. At the same time, it is perceived as prevailing and uplifting because Beah was able to demonstrate that there is hope. Later in the novel, Beah travels to
John Dower's War without Mercy describes the ugly racial issues, on both the Western Allies and Japanese sides of the conflict in the Pacific Theater as well as all of Asia before during and after World War II and the consequences of these issues on both military and reconstruction policy in the Pacific. In the United States as well as Great Britain, Dower dose a good job of proving that, "the Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor." (8) On this issue, there was no dispute among contemporary observers including the respected scholars and writers as well as the media. During World War II the Japanese are perceived as a race apart, a species apart referred to as apes, but at the same time superhuman. "There was no Japanese counterpart to the "good German" in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) Dower is not trying to prove how horrible the Japanese are. Instead, he is examining the both sides as he points out, "atrocious behavior occurred on all sides in the Pacific War." (12-13) Dower explores the propaganda of the United States and Japanese conflict to underline the "patterns of a race war," and the portability of racist stereotypes. Dower points out that "as the war years themselves changed over into an era of peace between Japan and the Allied powers, the shrill racial rhetoric of the early 1940s revealed itself to be surprisingly adaptable. Idioms that formerly had denoted the unbridgeable gap between oneself and the enemy proved capable of serving the goals of accommodation as well."(13) "the Japanese also fell back upon theories of "proper place" which has long been used to legitimize inequitable relationships within Japan itself."(9) After...
...oss Laura Simms, a narrator and his forthcoming foster mom, and understands the significance of sharing his practice with the world in expectations of avoiding such terrors from happening to other youngsters and to other parts of the world. (chapter 20).Afterwards Ishmael revenues to Freetown, Sierra Leon, a rebellion by the RUF and the Soldierly outs the non-combatant government, and the warfare Ishmael has been escaping from catches up with him. After his uncle’s passing, Ishmael escapes Sierra Leon for nearby Guinea and finally makes his tactic to his different lifetime in the United States (chapter 21).
The major conflict is that Ishmael is lost both physically and mentally because he has been abandoned and taken from his family. He must also avoid the rebels and their attacks. This makes life very difficult until he escapes Sierra Leone by going through many checkpoints and searches to make it out. He ends up in New York and is adopted by Laura, the organizations leader.
It has been five months for him at the rehab center, Benin Home. In song lyrics he wrote that Esther reads, he says that he feels like he has nothing left to be alive for, because he has no family. He is told that visitors were coming, such as UNICEF, the UN, the European Commission, and NGOs. Ishmael participates in the talent show they hold for the visitors, and he performs a Julius Caesar monologue and a short hip hop play about the redemption fo a boy soldier. He is recognized by the director, Mr. Kamara. He’s asked to be a spokesperson for boy soldiers. He spoke at several gatherings in free town about the wrongs of child soldiering and how it needs to stop. Mohamed, his childhood friend, gets to the rehab center months after Ishmael. He was in Mogwembo when the rebels attacked the village, but Ishmael hadn’t heard from him since. When Leslie says they cannot find any of his immediate family, Ishmael asks her to find his Uncle Tommy, his father’s brother. Ishmael didn’t expect much anyways, so he was pleasantly surprised when his Uncle was found. He sees his uncle, and his uncle begins crying. Leslie told him about everything Ishmael has been through, and uncle Tommy calls Ishmael his son. Uncle Tommy visits Ishmael at the center every week, and converse. His uncle tells him that his cousins do not know about his horrible experiences in the war. Ishmael meets his uncle’s family, and he was treated like a son by his uncle and aunt, and like a brother by his cousin, Allie.
The first wave that struck Ishmael's childhood and transformed him into a responsible young man was the loss of him family and home. One day, Ishmael returned to a village which was terrified and demolished of the rebel attack. He could never imagine that this village was the same one with the one he had been playing, raping, dancing and going to school. He could never imagine that this would be the last time he would see his family again. He could never imagine that his life would change forever ...
“Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud, It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear forgotten.” (Knowles 59-60). Gene Forrester, one of the main characters in John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace, describes his best friend Phineas' fall from a “tremendous tree, an irate steely black steeple beside a river,”(Knowles 6) at their all boys boarding school, Devon. Gene is an introverted young boy who is very academically gifted. Finny, however, is an extremely extroverted childish young boy who is very athleticaly gifted. Finny's fall eventually leads to terrible things, such as death and guilt. Throughout the novel Knowles uses Phineas' fall from the tree to symbolize his loss of innocence, to show Gene's guilt, and to develop Phinea's death.
During the 1980s, Sierra Leone was fighting a major civil war which resulted in many people fleeing their homes and many children getting recruited to fight in the war. These kids had no family, food, or shelter and joining the war was their only choice. The book A Long Way Gone, centers around a true story of a boy named Ishmael Beah and his journey through the war. He tells the story of his life and the people he encountered and affected him in different ways. Ishmael had many encounters with different people throughout his journey in Sierra Leone that shaped who he is today, these people include his older brother Junior, his military leaders who he fought with in the war, his friend and nurse from the rehabilitation center, Esther and his Uncle whom he reunited with after he underwent rehabilitation. All these people had specifically impacted Ishmael's life in negative or positive ways that were important to his survival.
This is how he copes with being a soldier, it’s his only power to control anything in his life. Throughout the book, he uses hip-hop music to give him strength but that is taken away from them. After years of surviving the war, UNICEF comes to save and rehabilitate not only Ishmael but many other children. Ishmael’s grandma told him, “We must strive to be like the moon.” He uses this to give him strength because only good things can come from the moon and no one complains about it. Eventually, UNICEF helps him find the only family he has left, an uncle and cousins at the capital who he has never met. While he is living there he gets invited to New York to speak about his story and come up with possible solutions at a United Nations conference. When he arrives back home he finds that the war has struck the capital. He can’t take the risk of becoming a child solider again so he leaves his home again to
Innocence is usually associated with youth and ignorance. The loss of one’s innocence is associated with the evils of the world. However, the term “innocence” can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Similarly, the loss of one’s innocence can be interpreted in more than one way, and, depending on the interpretation, it may happen numerous times. The loss of innocence is culture specific and involves something that society holds sacrosanct. It is also bounded by different religious beliefs. Still, no matter which culture or religion is at hand, there is always more than one way to lose one’s innocence, and every member of that particular culture or religion experiences a loss of innocence at least once in their lives. In addition, the individual’s loss of innocence will impair him or her emotionally and/or physically.
They are many ways to approach a conflict in order to find a resolution. For minimal actions people are often willing to talk about it, but for major actions the solutions to those problems are usually acted out by violence thus, the creation of war. For many centuries countries have been going to war over disagreements. However, it is not any type of disagreements; it is usually about the political beliefs of certain countries. In fact, World War 1 was caused by the disagreements of the European countries in power which were Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary. Some of the countries had a difference of opinion concerning political values on ruling the country. Some were in favour of nationalism, imperialism, or militarism which caused physical conflict and created war. (Duffy) Many soldiers had to go fight to represent their country and make them proud. Many novels have been written to explain to the people how the war had a psychological impact on the soldiers who participated in The Great War, but in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque he explains the true depth of war by implicating his knowledge of his days as a German soldier fighting on the western front. Remarque’s awful war experience influenced him to write his novel to show the realistic brutality of war by graphic violence, the emotional impacts on the privates as well as the impact of nationalism by the Germans.
While in a war zone Ishmael overcomes a conflicting decision of whether to save his own life or to help another soldier out, “He was not going to run down the beach again to drag a wounded man to safety… He could not even offer Eric Bledsoe a bandage, much less save his life.” The high modality in this scene reveals the decision he came to with difficulty and portrays his helplessness when talking about how little he could help the wounded man. Regardless of this morally wrong decision being made under immense pressure, it still shapes him to become stronger during his presence in the war. Additionally, Ishmael held a vital piece of evidence that would save Kabuo’s life and prove him innocent although that would mean his opportunity with Hatsue will vanish, it takes some self-convincing and deep thoughts for him to subsequently transfer this information, “He reached into his pocket and unfolded the notes Philip Milholland had written on September 16, and Ishamel explained what the shorthand meant and why he had come at ten-thirty in the night to speak to