Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

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.

Throughout A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah refers to memories before the war to comfort him during difficult times. Bringing up memories from the past are known as flashbacks. He put his mind at ease by focusing on happier times he had with his family such as his grandfather’s medicine, the blessing of his home in Mogdwemo, and picking up Ibrahim from school.

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.

The Story has great ways of describing events of losing loved ones. The author words his story vividly and clear enough that people can accurately picture what he is saying while keeping the thoughts war, family love, and hope in the story.

When mad, one may act vengefully without thinking. Others take time to mull things over and think of plans of revenge. In either case, retaliation or vengeance is never positive or fruitful. These negative effects can clearly be seen in Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone through Beah’s experiences as a child soldier, as well as Al Qaeda’s attacks on the Atocha train station in Madrid, Spain. Beah’s representation of the effects and dangers of vengeance helps delineate the terrorists reasons behind their attacks in Spain because both Beah and the terrorists sought retribution for what had been done to them.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, strongly depicts civil war brutalities and the truth of child soldiers. The author develops a theme through a riveting tale of circumstances that led a twelve year boy to transform into a ruthless warrior.

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

“Hope when you take that jump, you don’t fear the fall. Hope when the water rises, you built a wall.” In both A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah and “I Lived” by OneRepublic an important message prevails; take risks without hesitation, but be ready for all that may come of it. I have found that this is song represents living life to the fullest, no matter what your situation, life goes on, and will never come again. This would be an excellent song for someone in Ishmael’s obstructed position. “With every broken bone, I swear I lived.” “I Lived” by OneRepublic is a ray of reassurance and optimism for people that may be struggling to remember to live life to the fullest; reminding us to take chances and be accepting of who we truly are, or a song

During the holocaust many of the Jewish people questioned why god would do this to them. I have seen many documentary’s talking about this subject and how people got stringer with their religion and some broke away from it. Many of the strong people to hold tight to their faith in their last days, had a mindset. Some of them though that they had the right religion and people were trying to rip that away from them so they did what they could to keep it alive. Many of them started up schools in the ghettos to help the children learn their faith. Many other Jewish people broke away from their religion to try and save themselves from the camps.

Furthermore, after 23 years of War, 1.5 million killed, and 3.5 million refugees, helps to prove Voltaire’s viewpoint that God has not created a fair world and where religion does not help to determine what happens to you. In all sincerness, Voltaire would find Gula foolish for believing in God even after having gone through so many atrocious events. This incident relates directly to the recent shooting at the Antioch Church because even after being a victim of a deplorable event, a woman who had been shot in the thigh retained the ability to still believe in a God and the reasoning that everything always happens for a reason. Voltaire would find this very hard to believe but with developments in the scientific field, psychology suggests an answer that seems to explain why a god is necessary in so many people’s lives; a god is necessary to help humans find meaning in the world and spare us from an existential angst, and to help seek order from chaos. There are many differing viewpoints as to whether a God is or is not necessary in our lives but these are only mere speculations and the true answer can never be found.

Another weakness within Kimball’s (2010) book is that there is no such thing is holy war. Dr Kimball (2010) argues that charismatic leaders unleash a war and claim that it is a holy war. However according to Sengetu, Kimball’s holy-war perspective is very western minded. Sengetu argues that “holy war if fought to defend religion against enemies,” the idea of holy was is used to fight against those believed to threaten the spiritual or material well-being of the religious community. According to Selengute “religious violence is not a cover up for economic or cultural struggles, but religious conflict and violent encounters are situational moments of divine-human cooperation to further God’s plans for justice and redemption”. As wells this Sengetu

“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do”, Voltaire once said. This quote goes to show that every choice in life that we make comes with a consequence that follows, whether this is for better or worse. It is only natural for humans to make mistakes, but it is how these mistakes are resolved that dictates one’s fate. Rahim khan once stated that what happens in the course of a day has the power to change the rest of our lives forever. This passage exemplifies how monumental our actions are and how one seemingly small action has the power to change our lives. In Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, it is suggested that individuals can atone for the bad things they have done in their past: consequently, we explore the idea that taking

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.

Farah Ahmedi’s “The Other Side of the Sky” presumes that a reader will pay close attentiveness to contextual indications and expects the reader to have basic knowledge of or about the Islamic or Muslim way of life. For instance, Ahmedi writes that when the group her and her mother were travelling with found a mosque, the group got some water to drink at the mosque and said namaz there too.” (Paragraph 10). A mosque is a place for Muslim worship and ablutions, ritual cleansing before namaz, or prayers. Ahmedi adds that they were only able to use sand for their ablutions because that is all that is allowed when one can not obtain water. Throughout her memoir Ahmedi leaves context clues,even though she expects readers to know about portions