Imagine you hear gunshots echoing through the woods. You begin to see soldiers running towards you with overwhelming aggression. You begin to run as fast as you can and flee from the terrifying men. A Long Way Gone , written by Ishmael Beah is a story that was written of the author's experiences in the Sierra Leone civil war. Ishmael was constantly faced with dangers and the terrors that came from this civil war. Ishmael begins happy with his family but by the end he has lost his family and has the traumatic experience of being a child soldier. In A Long Way Gone the consequences of war shown include, a change in native culture, loss of family, and death and injury to innocent people. These consequences were shown throughout the story and the civil war. The change in Sierra Leone culture is one of the first consequences of war seen in the story. Throughout the civil war the rebels (RUF) recruited or forced many children to become soldiers. In order to get these children they would raid villages and then draft the strongest ones. They would then tell the children that they would not need their families …show more content…
Throughout the entire story Ishmael tells of how the rebel forces would slaughter innocent people. The people killed had nothing to do with the civil war, but the rebels would accuse them with false crimes. Ishmael describes what he sees after a rebel attack when he said, “More than twenty people lay facedown in the earth. They were all lined up, and blood still poured out of their bullet wounds (Beah 94).” shortly after that was said, Ishmael describes, “The bodies were mostly men in their late and early twenties and a few were younger (Beah 94).” These two statements describe how the rebels would brutally murder innocent civilians. The men that they had killed were in fact just innocent men trying to protect themselves or had just been in the wrong place at the wrong
A long way gone by Ishmael Beah, attempts to evoke a powerful response from the leader, by using vivid descriptions to show how he has become emotionally traumatized by the acts of violence in the war. The reader then sympathizes with Ishmael and begins to understand the lasting and deep, emotional pain that Ishmael deals with on a daily basis.
A prominent theme in A Long Way Gone is about the loss of innocence from the involvement in the war. A Long Way Gone is the memoir of a young boy, Ishmael Beah, wanders in Sierra Leone who struggles for survival. Hoping to survive, he ended up raiding villages from the rebels and killing everyone. One theme in A long Way Gone is that war give innocent people the lust for revenge, destroys childhood and war became part of their daily life.
The rebels killed his family and friends so he tries to gain revenge since they did destroy other aspects in his life too. Once Ishmael finally got to the village his family was staying, the rebels attack
A Long Way Gone is a novel written by Ishmael Beah. He’s a child who lost everything extremely valuable to him, due to war. Ishmael uses imagery, descriptive writing, and emotions to show the challenges it took to survive the war. As the war goes on, Ishmael describes the changes of how Mogbwemo, the village he was raised in, and his neighborhood, of how it went from peaceful to violence, and how the war had impact him and the people of Sierra Leone.
Senay Tsegehans Ms. Willow ENGC3S(04) 13 May 2024 A Long Way Gone Essay A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, recounts the author’s experience as a child soldier. In the first part of the novel, Ishmael Beah writes about his terrifying story as a child soldier in the civil war in Sierra Leone in his book A Long Way Gone.
In the introduction of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he writes, “There were all kinds of stories told about the war that made it sound as if it was happening in a faraway and different land. It wasn’t until refugees started passing through our town that we began to see that it was actually taking place in our country” (Beah 1). During this statement Beah says that he is completely oblivious to the war around him. These people living in Sierra Leone had adapted to the war to the point where their perception had been altered. With this memoir he shares his experiences and obstacles he faces throughout the war to become a beckon of hope in this despairing country. Ishmael uses his social skills, timely luck, and emotional strength, to find the courage to overcome these adversities and survive in and out of the war.
Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A long Way Gone, is very descriptive and has a very effective way of painting a picture in the reader’s mind of what he went through as a boy soldier. Throughout the memoir, Beah used quite a few statements that impacted me emotionally, on a personal level. His vivid detail, word choice and how personal, yet professional he kept his writing led me to understand how exactly the war affected him, and everyone else who lived, and lives, in Sierra Leone.
A long way gone by Ishmael Beah, attempts to evoke a powerful response from the leader, by using vivid descriptions to show how he has become emotionally traumatized by the acts of violence in the war. The reader then sympathizes with Ishmael and begins to understand the lasting and deep, emotional pain that Ishmael deals with on a daily basis.
Vanessa Nguyen AP Language and Composition March 11, 2024. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Solider Boy; Storytelling Analysis Storytelling is vital and transgressive, it is how the world communicates and carries itself, without storytelling events and lessons cannot be learned or shared. The majority of civilians can say they have been told a story or have told a story to learn or gather perspective because story-telling is an intuitive and intellectual way of entertaining knowledge, that transcends languages and borders. In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah depicts his life, fighting rebels in Sierra Leone.
In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Beah encourages the opinion that everyone is responsible for his/her own actions in all cases. Beah proves this opinion to be true through death, thievery, and violence.
In A long way gone, although Ishmael suffers from the atrocious status of the war, thanks to the help from various people and his efforts, he ultimately overcomes the adversity and his trauma and becomes a human rights activist to save and to defend those who are in the same situation as his childhood. Ishmael Beah, a 12-years boy, who loves rap music and dancing like general teenagers, begins to be racked with pain as he encounters the miserable war circumstance. The arduous situation of the war takes Ishmael’s family, his innocence, his identity of a child, and his childhood from him, but leaves the agony for him. To survive and to revenge on the rebels who murdered his family he enters the army. His life as a soldier traumatizes him. The war takes away his hope, dream, and pleasure, and makes him think he has: “no control over the future” (87). This claim demonstrates the replacement of his dream and delightful memory by the terrible and traumatic memory of the war. Even though those traumas, pain, and suffering ruin Ishmael’s life and mind, they force him to grow as a person and he ultimately overcomes them with his desire and other’s help. Ishmael’s change in attitude and
In a Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah describes his life as a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Army and how it impacted his childhood. Ishmael’s small village was taken over and he was forced to join the army at the age of 12.
A Long Way gone is a memoir about Ishmael Beah’s life before and after he was a child soldier. It took a toll on his life when his village was invaded by the rebel soldiers. His family was taken his mom and his little brother everything he had and known was ripped from his reach. Ishmael was a good kid and was kind because of the people around him his community shaped into the person he was when he lived there. He had a good place and had been surround by good people all of his life so it was easy for him to be happy just like the people around him.
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
In a report published by UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) it states that there are around 300,000 child soldiers, participating in over 30 different conflicts worldwide. Of these 300,000, 120,000 are serving in different countries in Africa. One of the countries where this issue has been extremely prevalent is Sierra Leone, where child soldiers made up a significant part of the armed forces during its 11-year civil war, with 10,000 out of about 50,000 soldiers being children. Accounts of child soldiers in Sierra Leone have been made, with both the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and the movie Ezra telling the story of a Sierra Leonean child soldier. Even though both the book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael