A Long Way Gone Summary

Long Way Gone are several stories from Ishmael’s village. They play a very important key role

Ishmael Beah was an innocent boy who enjoyed playing football, swimming in the streams, and even started a rap and dance group with his friends and older brother. The group discovered their love for rap music from old cassette tapes of O.P.P, Run D.M.C, and the Sugarhill Gang. Ishmael and Junior, along with their other friends cherished these few hip hop and rap cassette tapes. Ishmael constantly carried these couple tapes on him at all times. They choreographed dance routines and memorized all of the lyrics. The boys also entered a talent show in a close town. Ishmael, Junior, Talloi, and Mohamed have been singing and dancing to rap music since they first formed the group when Ishmael was only eight years old. They

Overall, Ishmael Beah is bright, happy, and good natured, until he is unexpectedly separated from his family, when rebel forces attacked and destroyed villages. The group of six boys continued on after there devastating journey to survive, they try several ways to escape the war enormity. The unstable teens struggle to take on board, a terrifying journey,

Despite the violence caused by the children, one of the staffers, Nurse Esther, becomes interested in Ishmael, learning about his childhood love of rap music. As a gift Esther gets him a rap cassette and Walkman, when she takes Ishmael and his friend Alhaji to the city. It is through this connection and his numerous counseling experiences with Esther that Ishmael eventually turns away from his violent self and starts to heal from his mental wounds.

Ishmael Beah was a boy from Sierra Leone who became a soldier in the country`s tragic civil war. He spent nearly all his childhood running away from the war and eventually ended up joining the army. During difficult times, Ishmael always held on to hope to continue his life’s journey. In A Long Way Gone, the theme is “Always have hope”, and is shown through Ishmael Beah’s hope for a better life, to find his family, and through the rehab staff`s hope for the boy soldiers.

In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Beah encourages the opinion that everyone is responsible for his/her own actions in all cases. Beah proves this opinion to be true through death, thievery, and violence.

In the film, police came to search the apartment. Mister and Pete hid as they do not want to depart to Riverview, the children's home. Every day, the two boys are avoiding the police or running from them. They must buy their own food, take care of their home and one another. Mister steps up and tries his best to provide and care for Pete, although being thirteen years of age, he cannot yet acquire a job. In the memoir, Ishmael and his friends are driven to do everything they can to avoid the rebels or they could be in danger, possibly killed. They end up only going out at night so that they will not get seen as easy and be as quiet as possible. Ishmael is a leader,

Ishmael Beah had a really tough life throughout his childhood and teenage years. In his literary work, A Long Way

Then, the boys were caught by a group of guarding villagers and they were sent to the chief of the village. When the chief is decides to drown the boys, the rap tape in Ishmael's pocket leads them to discover that they aren't a threat and only innocent boys. The boys stayed in Kamator for one month until it was finally attacked. Ishmael and his brother were seperated and never seen him again even his friends. Surviving alone in the forest for a month, Ishmael was able to find the exit of the forest and joins a group other boys. When the boys reach seashore, they were caught by fishermen. The fishermen gave the boys shoes because of their severe burn feet on the hot sand. After two weeks, the villagers caught the boys and when the chief saw Ishmael's rap cassette, they allows them to leave. When they are travelling to the next village, Saidu became sick and quiet. When they boys arrived, A woman was able to tell Ishmael about his family in the next village. The next day, Saidu died at night and he was givena funeral arrangements and Ishmael and the other boys became sad because of their friend's sudden death. After Saidu's death, they head to the next village looking forward seeing their families. They came across Gasemu and walk with him, but when they reached the village, the rebels were already attacking and the boys were hiding. Then, the rebels were able to hear them and Gasemu and the boys began to run while the

For a boy who often has a great deal of misfortune in his life, he also seems to have an endless amount of luck. Though fate may have played a big role in starting Ishmael’s war life, his luck always helps him overcome the obstacles the war throws at him. Before the war, Ishmael spends more than a month in the forest alone before he finally runs into people again. Ishmael consciously joins the new group of six boys. With over miles and miles of empty forest and rebel territory, Ishmael was lucky to find a group of boys who have the same motives as him. As the boys continue on their journey, they’ve been captured and are brought to a nearby village; they wait

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

In chapter 9, he says that, “It was a calm walk along the sand, since we didn’t except trouble in this part of the country. We chased and wrestled each other in the sand, played somersault and running games. We even bundled up Alhaji’s old shirt and tied a rope around it to make a soccer ball. We then played a game, and each time one of us scored a goal, he would celebrate with a soukous dance. We shouted, laughed, and dang our secondary-school songs” (59). This shows Ishmael and his friends becoming children one more time. For an instance they had forgotten everything around them. At first they were scared of the ocean, they feared the crashing waves on the shore, and show their inexperience. This scene is powerful because it shows what his life would have been if he hadn’t been dragged into the

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

Something to think about #10 For this weeks something to think about I read the book A Long Way Gone. This book follows the story of a boy named Ishmael Beah and his struggles with being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. The book tells the story of how Ishmael loses his family because of the war and that he joined the war in hopes of avenging his family. Their were many of the social justice principles present in this book but the ones I found to be most prevalent were; Option for the Poor and Vulnerable, The Common Good, and human dignity and respect for life.

Ishmeal begins his story in 1993, when he was twelve, and is leaving his hometown, Mogbwemo, in south-east Sierra Leone, for the day. He is going with his brother Junior and friend Talloi to Mattru Jong to dance in a talent show. His best friend Mohamed can’t make it. Thinking that they will only be gone a day, they don’t tell anyone where they are going. Although a violent, bloody revolution is being waged in Sierra Leone between the government and rebels, Ishmeal and his village have yet to be touched by it. Their only knowledge of it comes from refugees who pass through their town. After ten miles to Mattru Jong, they stop at Ishmeal’s grandmother’s house in the village of Kabati. She wonders what the boys could possibly being doing in Mattru