A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah Analysis

We have all seen or read about the political and social upheavals caused by war. Some may have even experienced it first-hand. Throughout history war has had negative psychological implications on those effected. However, there is no greater negative impact of war than the psychological and emotional turmoil that it causes individual soldiers.

As you have read war is a very different type of world everything is turned around and it confuses people. The author of the book The Things They Carried and the writer of the quote "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories. Wrote about war so people could have a better understanding of

Every person in the world goes through some life changing events, whether they are small or big. These changes shape a person's personality. Many life changing events are explained in Ishmael Beah’s book, A Long Way Gone. In the book he goes through many changes throughout his childhood. The story starts during a time in Sierra Leone where rebels are causing terror supposedly trying to make the government “better”. When really they seem to be causing more chaos than help. Ishmael Beah goes through some very life changing events throughout his journey, he manages to get out of these changes but they only seem to make his life worse. Losing the people that mattered most in his life, getting enlisted into the army, and becoming a part of a new

War is not one of the most pleasant images this world has seen. Usually it is regarded as one of the most

When running away from his home, Ishmael’s value of trust and survival became more relevant. Ishmael starts travelling with a group of boys, including his brother, to flee his town. In every village they passed through, trust was not given to them by those townspeople. Most of the villages assumed that they were rebels. Everyone is now afraid of each other because of the circumstances they are enduring. Trust is lost between Sierra Leoneans - Ishmael issues that the essence of human understanding is lost because people are too afraid of each other. As Ishmael travels with his friends from village to village, people often eye them with a sense of fear. Male children have lost their innocence as they become trained to kill. With their journey,

“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.

Ishmael Beah continues to reach out and help change the course for over hundreds of children that are confined in wars. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee, head of the Ishmael Beah Foundation and also co-founded the Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW) in 2008. In this committee, Beah has a goal to raise recognition to the children that are in conflict zones and is a campaigner for an end to hostilities. For the children who are struggling to recover from war, he wants to provide them with role models, like himself.

According to the test results, it is clear that Ishmael Beah is still affected by his past experiences when he was a child soldier. Ishmael’s responses reveal his memories and internal feeling. To the word “drugs” Ishmael Beah responded “energy”. Ishmael is still relives the events he had to go through. Before the group of soldiers would attack the rebels, they would smoke marijuana, stiff cocain with gunpowder. Ishmael Beah says: “ I had become addicted to them. They gave me a lot of energy. The first time I took all these drugs at the same time, I began to perspire so much that I took off all my clothes. My body shook, my sight became blurred, and I lost my hearing for several minutes. I walked around the village

Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the

Imagery, irony, and structure all has major influences on describing the effects of war. When it comes to telling about wars it's important you make an impact on your readers, and this can be done in several ways. It’s often seen writers use imagery to display the effects war had on not only the men themselves but their families also. Imagery is shown very effectively when it is said that people were shooting them in the back and shooting/ them more times necessary to actually kill them (Powers). The most common viewpoint of the war was told from the stories of what actually place in war, and the killing aspect of it all.

The propelling story by Brian Turner titled Jundee Ameriki which means American soldier, alludes to the lasting effects war has on everyone. War is a brutal circumstance many people are affected by whether voluntary or innocent. War affects both the people today and the people of the future and how we handle other peoples given rights. War leaves behind memories and pain both physical and emotional. The affects of war last forever in soldiers and civilians, theses war stricken people are forever in pain, which they cannot lose, and they must learn to deal with.

When I first learned that Convocation was going to be an award ceremony with the writer of our summer reading book, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, giving a speech, I did not think I would like the event. I had only read a little of the book written by speaker, and I thought he was only going to address the topics and situations that occurred in the novel. While I did almost nod off during the part of the Convocation were they gave out awards, I appreciated everything else. As a writer of poetry myself, I really enjoyed the poem written and read by the Professor of Creative Writing and at first believed it was going to be the only highlight of the whole experience, but I was wrong.

War can affect people in all sorts of ways, and sometimes it’s beneficial! For example, in the novel Hiroshima, some survivors were in very good financial situations after the bomb. Others were very poor or suffering from psychological effects of the tragedy. Some survivors also suffered severe physical damage. We are changed by a war in both negative and positive ways, which can result in inexorable mental and physical damage, as well as loss of equality.

War makes all its soldiers its victims. It strips them of their innocence; all had dreams for their future. Their future will become a lost life or a life full of memories that will continue to haunt them. The memories of killing, friends being killed, almosts, etc. War contains many horrors like these.

Ishmael Beah wrote about his experiences in child warfare. His writings touches that the sky's the limit. He educates the readers on the troubles children face war in a life surrounded by war. The scenarios that kids were forced into show how corrupted the area was and how strong the people had to be to live. Beah uses his voice in a very powerful way,showing that these things happen and that people should be aware what's going on in the world. Beah proves how strong minded, he is as he moved away from his country to a safer place. Before he went anywhere he got helped by a nurse who aided him with his mental health at a hospital.There were many things that hindered Ishmael’s journey throughout the book,that made him the young man he is today.