A Long Way Gone And The Old Chief Swesa Analysis

“When I was seven I had an answer to this question that made sense to me….if I was the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament” (Beah 218). A Long Way Gone is a memoir of a child soldier who is the author himself Ishmael Beah. Beah around the ages of twelve to thirteen grew up in Sierra Leone during its civil war. During his story, Beah talks in a tone that is straight to the point, however many devices help the reader imagine his loss of innocence. Beah uses a series of flashbacks, symbols and motifs to illustrate his loss to his readers.

Later on in the training, Ishmael has a sentence stuck in his head, “Visualize the enemy, the rebel who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you” (Beah 112). This sentence really gets to Ishmael in his training which builds up his anger against the rebels. This marks the end of his innocence as he starts to imagine burning rebels in a cage and laughing at

To start with, the story begins when Ishmael and his rap-passionate friends are all headed to Mattru Jong for a talent show, “I left home with Junior...and Talloi...to go to the town of Mattru Jong, to participate in our friends talent show” (Beah, p.6). As one can see, he was just a vulnerable, naive boy before mayhem broke loose around him. Moreover, Ishmael endures an extremely perilous adventure in the jungle while fleeing war. But even though he evaded real danger for a while, he was never able to elude his imaginary fears, “I felt as if somebody was after me. Often my shadow would scare me and cause me to run for miles. Everything felt awkwardly brutal. Even the air seemed to want to attack me and break my neck” (Beah, p.49). According to this situation, Ishmael was nothing more than a scared little boy who is simply running for his life. Even though this is a good point, it fails to account for the multiple massacres Ishmael contributed to,“...I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and shot more people. I shot everything that moved...” (Beah, p.119). How can one be innocent and naive after picking up a gun and using it against a human being? At the end of the day, guns don’t kill people, people kill people and this is exactly what Ishmael did. He killed. And killed. And

The more people Ishmael loses, the less he has to fight for- the less he has to hope for. Upon finding his family’s ashes, Ishmael is enraged- not hopeless. Ishmael’s hope is alive, but shrinking as Gasemu indicates when he says, “Your forehead used to glow naturally when you were just a child … We thought it was because you were happy all the time. Your mother said you even smiled when you slept. But when you started your troublesomeness and were angry, your forehead glowed even more…And here you are, it isn’t shining anymore,” (Beah 92). Ishmael’s forehead did not glow because he was mad or sad or embarrassed or happy. Ishmael’s forehead glowed because he was passionate and hopeful. The angrier he got when he was younger, the more his forehead glowed seeing as he believed in his anger. Despite the fact that his hope shrank when he was faced with the death of his family, the threat of the rebels, and the fear of dying, these events did not destroy Ishmael’s hope- Ismael’s hope begins its descent to nothingness when he becomes a child soldier and, consequently, a drug addict. When Ishmael no longer mourns the death of human life, his hope is lost. When Ishmael cannot care less if he lives or dies, his hope is lost. When he would rather continue killing as

To start off, all of Ishmael’s problems stem from his original conflict when he has to run away from the war, his family, and his friends. The origin of the situation was when the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) attacking his home city of Mogbwemo (where his parents were). Later on in the month the rebels attack Mattru Jong (where

Ishmael, in A Long Way Gone was made boy soldier. Ishmael went through many commands to hurt people and try to bring an anonymous message. Treating people with injustice without knowing the reason why he was even doing it. Showing corpses, dead people before torturing them and then killing them. Becoming brainwashed with all the task he was being told to do he thought that this was his life. Making games out of the torture and killing with his friends. Slowly giving up on trying to get away from the rebels. “People were terrified of boys our age” (Beah 37). Having everyone still around scared of him, not doing anything to help him, but just trying to get away from him.

In the book, A Long Way Gone, there is an array of different tones. The author uses them to shine light on the central theme and main idea of the story. The tone is important because it emphasizes the emotion of the text and the story being told. The author, Ishmael Beah, who is also the main character in the book has had a rough life. He grew up in the city of Mattru Jong, which is in the country of Sierra Leone. War had swept over the land changing everything and everyone. Beah was forced into being a child soldier at the age of twelve. By looking at the book, A Long Way Gone, one can see that Beah was put through things that no person should go through and it has shaped his entire world, with death, loss, and pain.

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.

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.

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

War has scared people all over the world, including the people outside it, and has made changed people to do things they did not know they were capable of. A Long Way Gone is a book that features Ishmael Beah who is both the author and the narrator in this novel. Beah was born in 1980 and was only around 11 years old when a civil war in Sierra Leone broke out in 1991. The civil war had many problems that took place, but this novel aims its focus on the fact that both sides of the war used child soldiers and he was one of the victims to become one. Beah had become a child soldier when all his friends started to die off and were forced to become a soldier and survive the war he had desperately tried to escape from. Ishmael Beah can be seen

Much like Sierra Leone, Ishmael is war torn over the two sides of himself, the child and the soldier in him. This is evident in the lines, “I distanced myself from the games in the village and sat behind the houses staring into open space until my migraine subsided” and “I could become angry, yes, begin to visualize scenarios of shooting or stabbing a rebel.” These describe Ishmael’s confliction within himself of being a child and being a soldier. It was near the end when Ishmael’s war was finally won. This is evident in the line, “The war memories had formed a barrier that I had to break in order to think about any moment before the war.” This line shows Ishmael realizing how to learn to be a child again. Therefore, the loss of his home, his country and his childhood had formed Ishmeal into the person he is

Why it is important to see the ramifications that Ishmael feels is because it shows the inequality he has to live within the matter of joining the army.: “I joined the army because of the loss of my family” (Beah 199). This displays that he never wanted to murder any individual. He is unwilling to murder yet through fury he wants to. Throughout this event the inequalities that is shown is Ishmael does not want to kill, but through anger he has to, this is important to understand because you can see the human side before he becomes a killing machine. Ishmael says this because he wanted to show the audience that everyone is human and no one is born a killing machine.

A Long Way Gone and The Bite of the Mango are two stories written about the same war - and its effects - from the two different perspectives of a young boy, Ishmael and a young girl, Mariatu. Although both novels have their differences, when compared, they come together to create a wider understanding of how the civil war in Sierra Leone affected all kinds of people in ways both comparable and dissimilar. In both The Bite of the Mango and A Long Way Gone, main characters Mariatu and Ishmael are forced to mature at an extreme pace by going through several, very different experiences caused by the same war.

To be quite honest, there are no stories more heart-breaking than the stories about African war and child soldiers. “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah is about his own personal experiences through man's most cruel act, war. The story starts out sad but it has a happy ending thankfully. Ishmael Beah’s purpose of the book is to tell readers the sad truth about what has and what is happening in parts of Africa. The author shares the details of growing up without parents, constantly hiding from rebels, becoming a child soldier and rehabilitating years after the traumatic event. Overall, the book was well written mainly because of the detail used to describe his adventures which help us connect to him personally, the format worked out nicely but there was only one turning point in Ishmael’s character which does not happen until close to the end.