A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah Analysis

Through the use of imagery, Beah documents the hardships he experienced, including the exposure to war, loss of innocence, and loss of family. He intricately details these events as frightening and overwhelmingly difficult to tolerate. For Beah, being exposed to combat at age 12 was traumatizing, and he portrays details of the horrifying events through imagery.“When the rebels finally came I was cooking...My heart was beating faster than it ever had. Each gunshot seemed to cling to the beat of my heart.” (Beah 23). He describes how intimidating and alarming each bullet was and how horrific each shot exploded throughout his being. War quickly developed into a regular occurrence for Beah, leaving him deprived of his childhood and innocence. He later illustrates his

He was just a little boy forced to kill, so they sent him to rehabilitation. He no longer used violence. Beah stated, “I had to leave because I was afraid that if I stayed in Freetown any longer, I was going to end up being a soldier again or my former friends would kill me.” (Beah, 209). That means Beah does not want to fight anymore because back then he missed his squad and the violence.

In order for the military to use these children as killing machines they had to use several tactics to emotionally manipulate these boys into killers. In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah he states the following “In the daytime instead of playing soccer in the village square, I took turns at the guarding posts around the village, smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown, cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which always spread out on the table and of course taking more of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them” (120). Basically the tactics the soldiers used to indoctrinate child soldiers were drugs, violent movies, and teach them to seek vengeance for their family’s death. These tactics would rob the innocence of many kids and their childhoods.

The novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is about Ishmael’s life in Sierra Leone. Would you want to be one of the 300,000 soldiers today participating in current war related events? This is what Ishmael had to do on a daily bases. A change in plans relocated Beah and his older brother, along with his two friends to practice for a contest in a town verily close by. Fortunately for Beah it was a day before the Revolutionary United Front attacked his home in Mogbwemo. Being a child soldier negatively affected Ishmael Beah by making him emotionally unstable, he lost his whole entire family, and he was forced to kill anybody who the RUF requested.

Passage #3: “My name is Edith Prior,” she says. “And there is much I am happy to forget.”

The novel A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier tells the story of a boy named Ishmael Beah and his experience in the civil war that was happening in his country. Beah experiences many violent consequences in childhood. These violent experiences teach the reader about how his trust and other people’s trust change due to violence.

“Any child soldier has to go through a lot of love, care and understanding to become normal” (Emmanuel Jal). “A Long Way Gone” was written by Ishmael Beah and published in 2007. This novel is about a boy named Ishmael Beah and he enjoyed rap music the minute he hear it and it got him out of many situations. He lost his family and was alone running from rebel soldiers. The army eventually recruited him and some of friends he found while he was running. UNICEF (a rehabilitation center) picked up the boys and brought them back to the state of mind they had before the guns, death, and drugs. The three most important scenes in this story include when Ishmael Beah saw the women running into the village with a dead baby on her back, When he burned the bottom parts of his foot walking on sand, and how acted when he first arrived at the rehabilitation center.

As the story moves along Ishmael’s relation with the civilians drastically changes. In the beginning, before the rebels reached the villages surrounding his home, he was accepted. He always would have a place to spend, and a host willing to feed him. They were carefree, and they could play outside with the other children in front of the adults amused eyes. As the story moves on the civilian stop being so trustful, and become suspicious of them. “This is one of the consequences of the civil war. People stop trusting each other, and every stranger becomes an enemy” (p.37). Rumours of their group is enough for the men of villages to come out prepared to defend themselves. They’re reluctantly given food, and shelter in some villages. Mother’s no longer trust their children around them. Around the middle of the novel, Ishmael and his group reach a fishing village. It seemingly is abandoned

In the poem “The Past” by Ha Jin, the narrator in the poem talks about his past. In the first stanza, he talks about how he accepted his past whether it was good or bad. His past is basically a part of who he is but if his past is forgotten or thrown away then he would lose his identity.

“Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you. If a thing falls outside the range of people's curiosity, then they simply cannot make inquiries about it. It constitutes a blind spot — a spot of blindness that you can't even know is there until someone draws your attention to it.” Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah tells his story of him endeavoring adversity. Beah was able to recreate the horrific struggles of war and transform his problems into something positive. He wrote a memoir as well as traveled the world and blessed people with his presence telling his journey of life struggles. He wanted to show how he conquered his problems so he could help others who’ve dealt with the same thing. During his childhood, he is forced to fight in the civil war in Sierra Leone. This drastically changes his life, he struggles as a youth falling into the temptation of drugs and alcoholism. With him being so young, innocent, and naive, he constantly struggles with trying to mature. However, he eventually is

On March 23, 1991, the civil war in Sierra Leone began when the RUF attempted to overthrow the Sierra Leone government. The war lasted a total of 11 years ending in 2002 with a estimated total of 50,000 people dead. In the beginning the RUF did not have enough soldiers to fight, so on the idea that the Sierra Leone government would not fire on children, they began recruiting kids as young as seven. After a while the government too had a lack of soldiers and began recruiting children. In 2002 after the RUF been defeated President Kabbah declared the Sierra Leone Civil War over.

For my whole life since the age of one, The United States has been at war. I’ve said goodbye to my dad for multiple deployments and counted the days until his return. Because of this, war has frequently been on my mind, sparking interest in The United States relationships with other countries and groups within these countries. It is obvious to me that this where my passion to study international relations and political science began. Many other aspects in my life have fueled my interest as well. Having the opportunity to host an Italian foreign exchange sister opened my eyes to her views of U.S politics and culture. Making me realize that other nations look to us both politically and culturally in helping them with important international problems. Recently, I also read the book “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah about child soldiers in Africa. It showed me the violence that young children have to endure in other parts of the world and how hard the lives they’re born into can be.

“The black, submissive sky recedes when the influence from the white, imperious moon disrupts the balance of candid humanity,” my brother always said.

"Three things cannot be hidden: The Sun, The Moon, and The Truth. These three things are responsible for keeping the world in balance. None can survive without the other.