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
Hope enables people to move on by providing the thought that maybe tomorrow’s events will be better than today’s. Hope is a theme that remains constant in every part of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Ishmael begins the novel optimistic, believing he will find his family again. This optimism is later lost when Ishmael is recruited by the army to fight against the rebels, causing him to become addicted to drugs and the thrill of killing. Three years after his recruitment, Ishmael is rescued by UNICEF-a group dedicated to rehabilitating child soldiers. During his rehabilitation, Ishmael discovers hope once more by relearning how to trust, love, and have the will to survive. The presence of hope throughout A Long Way Gone enables Ishmael to
The second part of the book takes an uncompromising look at the difficulties this entailed for the boy soldier and his peers, who for a long time resist the most determined efforts to restore their humanity, their anger at having been taken from their family. Children are meant to be protected from violence and war. They are extremely vulnerable both physically and psychologically, to abuse and misguidance. They are easily influenced by those around them because they are young and incapable of forming independent opinions. Adult soldiers at Ishmael’s base were snorting brown brown and smoking marijuana, Ishmael, as naive as any child would be, was influenced by these people and looked up to the adults as role model and leader and so he began to do it as well. “I took turns at the guarding posts around the village, smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown” The job of a soldier is to fight wars, to take lives, to kill if not be killed. If these children are taught hatred
Ishmael Beah had a really tough life throughout his childhood and teenage years. In his literary work, A Long Way
The Bite of the Mango speaks about the war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s and is through the eyes of Mariatu Kamara, a female and amputee, while A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is written by Ishmael Beah, a boy soldier that lost everything. They both were casualties to one of the most brutal civil wars; however, their experiences were different due to gender.
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.
Since the start of the Sierra Leonean war in March of 1991, innocent civilians have been the primary target of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)’s wrath. The people of Sierra Leone have faced significant problems due to the invasions and attacks by the Rebel Forces and are the main population that is being affected by this group’s disapproval of the government. One person who experienced profound changes in her life due to the start of this war is Mariatu Kamara, a victim of a Rebel attack that cost her both her childhood and her hands. Throughout her memoir, “The Bite of the Mango,” she is faced with numerous traumatic events and meets an abundance of people who were very significant in her life and some of whom helped her survive the war. Kamara also gives the reader a variety of themes to use as a foundation to understanding war life, which also serve to help readers learn more about life, grow as people, and rise above to help others in need. Mariatu Kamara has not only changed the lives of people all throughout Sierra Leone by giving them a voice and an outlet to share their experiences, but has also proved to be an inspiration for countless amputees around the world.
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.
In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, a former boy soldier with the Sierra Leone army during its civil war(1991- 2002) with the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), provides an extraordinary and heartbreaking account of the war, his experience as a child soldier and his days at a rehabilitation center. At the age of twelve, when the RUF rebels attack his village named Mogbwemo in Sierro Leone, while he is away with his brother and some friends, his life takes a major twist. While seeking news of his family, Beah and his friends find themselves constantly running and hiding as they desperately strive to survive in a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. During this time, he loses his dear ones and left alone in the
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
What is the definition of truth? Is there one? A memoir is from one person's perspective and memories, other people going through similar or even the same thing may have different memories because they have a different perspective. This makes the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah a non-fiction text.
In “ A Long Way Gone” Beah describes a vivid nightmare which is a metaphor for his experiences as a child soldier. Beah reveals his internal conflict in his dream. The dream begins with Ishmael and his brother, Junior, swimming at Mattru Jong and diving for oysters. This exemplifies the time before the attack when Ishmael and his family were spaced out and happy.
Slaughter of innocence “A Long Way Gone” Is a true story about Ishmael Beah who is a child soldier. When he is twelve years old his village is taken over by rebels. Which causes his family to separate. His main objective is to find his family and he has a long adventure throughout the way. He becomes a kid soldier unwillingly.
3. The Rebels catch the group of boys and try to recruit some of them in the process 4. The boys almost get killed by a village when trying to find shelter 5. Ishmael wanders the jungle alone for a whole day 6. Ishmael finds the village where his family is staying and Rebels kill everyone there 7.
A long way gone, written by Ishmaeal Beah, is a novel articulated in a first person narrative, where the author cogitates back to the time when he was a twelve year old in the civil war remote of Sierra Leone who made an effort to flee the Civil War but was shortly obliged and compelled to fight. Beah comprehends that some people are not aware of the horrendous nature of the Civil War in Sierra Leone. Thus, he paints a vivid and graphic picture of what befalls in such a war. The intention of this novel was to depict the endangerments and vices of Civil War in Africa. In return, the audience or reader will realize that this novel is not just a synopsis of someone’s war stories, but preferably a heartbreaking tale of wars influence on a young
At the start of the Yugoslavian hostilities, Ana Juric is a carefree ten-year old living in Zagreb. She finds the trappings of war as more fascinating than treacherous. “The police built the sandbag walls [and] by the end of the week we’d absorbed the sandbags into our playscape.” Soon the war becomes real when the family takes Ana’s critically ill sister across the border for a MediMission flight. On the perilous journey home, Chetnik paramilitaries slaughter Ana’s parents. She escapes only