A Long Way Gone: Ishmael's Transformation

Eventually, Ishmael is recruited, like many boys his age and even younger, to join the army of Sierra Leone and fight in the conflict. Actually, he's not so much recruited as threatened with death if he won't serve. It's not a difficult choice. Thanks to guns, drugs, and brainwashing by his commanding officers, Ishmael is transformed

At the young age of thirteen Ishmael was forced into war by the rebels in the community where he was taught that killing people required no emotion at all. Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone:

“I have been rehabilitated now, so don’t be afraid of me. I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child” (Beah 199). Ishmael Beah had a long road to rehabilitate but he was able to rehabilitate because he had vital forces shaping him. In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, a long way gone, Ishmael was a child soldier in Sierra Leone. He wrote a memoir sharing his experiences of being a child soldier and of him rehabilitation. During 1991 to 2002 there was a vicious civil war going on in the western African country of Sierra Leone between the RUF rebels and the government forces. Ishmael Beah was a young 10-year-old boy who lived in a small village, he liked rap music and dancing hip hop with his friends. Ishmael was never affected by the war until one day when

Ishmael's life is turned upside down when he and his friends lose their families in the attack and are forced to wander from village to village looking for food, shelter, and kindness

While he was young he joined the Sierra Leone army at the age of 13, which was the end of his childhood according to the book. Ishmael lost his innocence when he was set to invade a rebel camp and became a killer. He grew the strength to be able to kill someone when one of his close tent-mates were killed. After his tent-mate was killed he became angry and filled with different emotions which drove him even more to be a killer. Ishmael also became addicted to drugs and he tended to have violent flashbacks of his childhood memories.

This is a very detrimental time during Ishmael’s life because he is still a very young boy experiencing this. The violence that the rebels exhibit, successfully terrify the people of these villages. This fear forces young boys into physical and mental slavery. They become child soldiers under the authority of the rebels of RUF. I noticed that throughout the novel, Ishmael became more cautious and paranoid.

Ishamael Beah’s resilience allowed him to be adaptable to many different and difficult situations. In the beginning of the book Ishmael and his friends decide to go to Mattru Jong for a talent show. As they begin to go there they hear that the war has hit the mining areas. Ishmael and his friends knew that they may never be able to find their families again. Ishmael adapted very quickly and never gave up on trying to find them. “For more than three hours, we stayed at the Wharf, anxiously waiting and expecting to see our families or to talk to someone who had seen them.” (Beah 10) They never heard any news of them. Ishmael, Junior, Talloi begin to travel back saying goodbye to their friends. Ismael and they boys saw their first look, at what the war was about. They saw blood everywhere, parents carrying their dead children and people in pain. As Ismael, Junior and Talloi traveled

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.

Throughout the story, Ishmael and his friends go through tough times of needing psychological, safety, and

There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of these child soldiers  , Ishmael Beah is a child who lived most of his childhood in the war   . He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words according to  http://www.alongwaygone.com/index.html and his memoir “A Long Way Gone”. The war had made ishmael have perseverance  in the long run , inference that he was brainwashed by the war and that ishmael was a very hopeful child always wishing for better days.

Ishmael left home for a rap battle thinking he would return home. he never thought that he would become a boy soldier in the civil war. He killed people he didn’t want to want to kill, he did drugs that pretty much killed him inside and out. He made it out of the civil war with a broken heart and a gun in his hand. He wanted to tell his story about what the things

Beah had never a home, he had never a place where he went and felt safe. Ishmael was never loved, he was just used for the benefit of others. He had to survive all the physical and emotional pain. Beah overcame the psychological problems that the war left him and learned how to regain his humanity that the army had taken from him. Ishmael never lost hope, he always looked forward for a better future. He kept having hope even when he was brainwashed by the army and was forced to do bad things. He was always hoping to survive. Despite what Ishmael lived through, he regained his humanity by the help of others but mostly by his perseverance and personal strength he could vanquish his killing thoughts and become a confident person

Today is the day of thanksgiving. We did not celebrate Thanksgiving in China, but I still want to thank something. I am truly grateful that I did not need to experience any warfare in my childhood. I did not need to worry about hunger and drought in my life despite that some time the weather were terrible. Compared with Ishmael’s childhood, mine was perfect and have no flaw to be pick and complain about. I hope that children like him could escape from wars, and they could go to school enjoying their childhood with their peers. Back to the book, Ishmael was 15 years old. Because of the war, he celebrated his birthday with his squad talking about Nacbac with drugs. His family was gone. Yet the turning point of his life came without notice.

Ishmael lived in Sierra Leone while their civil war was going on. He was captured by a militia and trained to kill. In CNN’s interview with Ishmael Beah, Beah talks about how he went from a child that was terrified of gunshots, to being the gunshots. Also, Beah talked about how if the children showed any sign of weakness such as crying, they were dealt with in very harmful ways. Beah Recalled a 9 year-old child being shot because he was crying about how he missed his mother. Beah also recalled many other horrific incidents in his interview such as a father carrying his dead child to the nearest hospital just to see if there was anything they could do. Also he said that there was a mother with her baby strapped to her back, running away from a war zone, but she didn’t even notice that the baby had been shot while she was running (Drinking a Glass of

In 1991, a gruesome and terrible war broke out in Sierra Leone that ended up killing 50,000 harmless people (Shah). Ishmael Beah, a ten-year-old Sierra Leonean, found himself running from the horrific war while watching everything around him fall apart. While he was trying to seek protection, he was forced to fight in the government army as a child. Beah was exposed to hard drugs, murderous actions, and a new way of life. This is where Ishmael Beah lost the gift of childhood innocence and fell into the grisly ways of a murderer at a very early age. After years of violently fighting against the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) came to the army camp and brought Ishmael back to safety at the Benin Home. In the memoir, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah transitions from a child soldier to a civilized person because of the nurse, Esther, and moving in with Uncle Tommy.