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A Long Way Gone Theme Essay

Decent Essays

Starting a calm day in Sierra Leone to surviving, and being trafficked into the army is what Ishmael Beah experiences as a child. A Long Way Gone is a memoir of a child soldier, Ishmael Beah, and the memoir shows the experiences he has throughout his childhood. Beah experiences trauma of the war just like all of the other child soldiers. Ishmael is one of the very little amount that survive the war. The three main themes in A Long Way Gone are the themes of survival, healing, and memory. In A Long Way Gone the theme of survival is presented when ishmael is forced to survive. Ishmael states “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. That night we were so hungry that we stole people’s food while they slept” (Beah 29). The rapid change of direction forces Ishmael to do stuff that he wouldn’t do normally in order to …show more content…

The author states “These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past” (Beah 20). While in the war, Ishmael’s memories don’t relate to his family, because the traumatic events mask his memories of his good childhood, and it is until he recovers that he starts to remember his family. Also while in the safety of New York, it is new to Ishmael, and it makes him compare things to Sierra Leone, and this triggers memories from the past. Ishmael’s memories of the war seem irrelevant, but in New York the memories are still relevant because the environment he’s around focuses on his memories, and this gives Ishmael a place to vent off his stories. In A Long Way Gone the theme of memory is shown to be a big part of the memoir when Ishmael’s occurrences in the safe life trigger memories of his horrid past, and this causes him to reflect on his

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