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A Long Way Gone Essay

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Big War, Bigger People War is and can be defined as both a state of emergency and the liberator to a world so corrupt and unjust. The war in Sierra Leone separated families and ruined lives. How can a fight for a cause so right be so wrong. The Books “The Bite of the Mango” and “A Long Way Gone” compare and contrast Ishmael Beah’s experience to Mariatu Kamaras’. Both books are very different yet very similar. In The Bite of the Mango and A Long Way Gone both characters lose their childhood because of the war, but go through different journeys based solely on their gender. Loss of innocence is a constant theme throughout both A Long Way Gone and The Bite of the Mango. Both Beah and Kamara have to leave everything behind in their old lives and start a new journey. They both learn to adapt to live in a war for a short period, even if it means leaving behind their childhood memories and life. “Things changed rapidly in a matter of seconds and no one had any control over anything. We had yet to learn these things and implement survival tactics, which was what it came down to.”( Beah 29) Beah shows the amount of inexperience and innocence still within him as the war begins. No clue as to what war could possibly be like, he expresses vulnerability and innocence as if he were a puppy in a world of wolfs. War quickly destroyed Beah’s and Kamara’s innocence. Both of them saw people with their own eyes get brutally killed. They both saw innocent people including their own relatives and kids fall …show more content…

Men are always last, women and children always go first. But in a war so brutal even the youngest of boys are treated as adults and feared like criminals. The Bite of the Mango and A Long Way Gone show exactly how men and women endure a distinct type of pain throughout this war. Being a boy means a lot to the rebels. They can use you to fight their war, ignite fear into people’s life and destroy as they

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