Compare The Ways Gone And A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

Imagine coming home to a house that has no warmth or food. Constantly feeling like you are in a place you can’t get out of. This is how poverty may feel to others. The expeirences from the author Jo Goodwin Parker in the story “What Is Poverty” and the McBride family from the novel “The Color Of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute To His White Mother” show that there are various effects of living in poverty that include emotional problems, adolescent rebellion, and

The second part of the book takes an uncompromising look at the difficulties this entailed for the boy soldier and his peers, who for a long time resist the most determined efforts to restore their humanity, their anger at having been taken from their family. Children are meant to be protected from violence and war. They are extremely vulnerable both physically and psychologically, to abuse and misguidance. They are easily influenced by those around them because they are young and incapable of forming independent opinions. Adult soldiers at Ishmael’s base were snorting brown brown and smoking marijuana, Ishmael, as naive as any child would be, was influenced by these people and looked up to the adults as role model and leader and so he began to do it as well. “I took turns at the guarding posts around the village, smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown” The job of a soldier is to fight wars, to take lives, to kill if not be killed. If these children are taught hatred

The author uses a seemingly endless cycle of poverty to emphasize the cage in which the characters are trapped. As Lizabeth muses over her childhood, she recalls the daily cycle of how “each morning our mother and father trudged wearily down the dirt road and around the bend, she to her domestic job, he to his daily unsuccessful quest for work.” (1). Every morning began the same way, passed the same way, and ended the same way. Lizabeth feels trapped, forced to go through the same series of events for what seems to be the rest of her life, with the same people, in the same place. When the author pairs this with the “dusty” setting of the town and the time placement of the Great Depression, it creates an effect of hopelessness for the first part of the story. This is only furthered by Lizabeth continually returning to the idea that “Poverty was the cage in which we were all trapped.” (1). Lizabeth opens the story by first giving a description of her hometown as “dusty”, remembering the poverty and hopelessness. She then continues by referring to the cage of not having enough money, and the cycle that it put them through, and ends by alluding to her future being limited to her poverty.

Imagine: A young boy scavenges for food to provide for his impoverished family which was composed of his ill mother and starving siblings or a homeless, single mom desperatley seeking for shelter. These synopses from "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt and "The Street" by Ann Petry share a common theme: perseverance through hardships. In "Angela's Ashes," a memoir by Frank McCourt, he stells about the harships he endured through his childhood, such as, struggling to assist his family in the midst of poverty by stealing food to provide for them. Futhermore, in "The Street," a novel by Ann Petry, tells the story of young Lutie Johnson, a homeless single mom who is seeking shelter for herself and her children. In these two excerpts, the authors use the characters, settings, and events to develop the theme, which I've identified as perseverance through hardships.

The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete is an inspirational movie about two friends who conquer a very challenging summer, yet it includes inspirational stories of redemption and key terms used in the Black Families Textbook.

In Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone the author reflects on nature and reveals how lonely and lost he truly is. The imagery also mirrors the hellish civil war in Sierra Leone. Initially, as Beah begins to walk down a road in hopes of finding a village he starts to notice all of the dead bodies he is stepping over. “I had passed through burnt villages where dead bodies of men, women, and children of all ages were scattered like leaves on the ground after a storm” (49). Beah illustrates a horrific image and compares it to something that almost anyone today can picture what it looks like after a storm where it is leaf after leaf lying on the road which is now happening in Sierra Leone except the rebels are the storm. Also, the people are the leaves, which creates a terrible image that he allowed other people to perceive by using something that we can connect with since when leaves have fallen from the tree they are dead, dried up, and are now doomed

106-107). One of the other boys response to the ultimatum was “It is better to stay here for now. We had no choice. Leaving the village was as good as being dead” (p. 107). The lieutenant’s weapon was instilling them with fear and telling them that the only way you could stay alive was if you joined their forces. Of course, the men and young boys complied with the lieutenant because their first thoughts were this is life or death. What Ishmael did not know when he was a child soldier was he was being drugged. Before going to war, they would give them white tablets to boost their energy. The boys free time consisted of “...smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown, cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which was always spread out on the table, and of course taking more of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them” (p. 121). First of all, a 13 year old boy should not be smoking marijuana, sniffing brown brown,and cocaine mixed with gunpowder. Those drugs are lethal and he could have been killed by

In the book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah writes down a few stories he heard from his grandmother or from his friend Musa. One tale he tells us about is the “wild pigs”(p.53). In this tale, there is a hunter who hunts wild pigs. The hunter has magic and would turn himself into a boar. He would trick and lead the herd of wild boars to the forest.

There are many similarities and differences between A Long Way Gone and Beasts of No Nation, but one of the biggest similarities was the war in these foreign countries. In both stories the two boys live very similar lives; fun childhood, war breaks loose, loses their childhood and faith in their humanity. Both boys describe the wars as a horrific experience and are both forced into rehabilitation camps. In Beasts of No Nation we only see Agu living through the war and really what ends up on him and most boy soldiers who have faced such terrible things. As we know Beah from A Long Way Gone gives the reader a look at what it takes to get someone integrated into society again, and even then no one can never be returned. It is much like a used toy. After fifteen children have used it, it can never return to its original brand new state, of course it is easy to care for it more and keep an eye on it but tha can’t make it new again. Humans who have gone through traumatic

Throughout this story the reader is encouraged to pull for the underdog. Mr. Haskins and his family represent a family met with hardship, an underdog, potentially pulling themselves up from the bottom and ascending towards success. This subject matter would be unknown to a middle class, well to do family, and as Dr. doCarmo explains: “Naturalist works often deal with subjects most comfortable middle-class readers wouldn’t consider part of their ordinary lives” (doCarmo). Most middle class readers have never faced losing everything such as livelihood, money, and home. This automatically captivates them in the beginning of the story. Garland holds the attention of the middle class by reminding the reader of this unknown throughout the story: “It was the memory of this homelessness, and the fear of its coming again, that spurred Timothy Haskins and Nettie, his wife, to such ferocious labor

In this story “A Long Way Gone”, Ismeal Beah learned to suppress his emotional and physical pain. Those suppressions were played out in many locations in this story. One example of this was in page 11 when Ismeal Beah saw his father, who he had not seen in a while, returning from work. That day when Ismeal's father saw him he gave him a smile and was about to utter something out, but quickly turned away as Ismeal's stepmother came out. Ismeal was then very sad but held in his tears. Another example from the story was on page 45 , when an elder stood up and prayed to the gods and ancestors; he prayed that Ismeal’s family will always be together. A final example was on page 89, when everyone started to sob except for Ismeal , but later on he sat by

They are taught that no one will care for them and it is up to them to provide and survive for themselves. Pete and Mister’s mothers are both gripped by addiction. Pete has to watch his mother beg a dealer for more drugs and watch Mister’s mother shoot heroine, he is new to this life and unaccustomed to it. Mister is used to this life and knows how to survive, which is why he takes the lead in the movie. When Ishmael is tossed into the real world he barely knows how to survive. Since Ishmael lives in a less developed country he is accustomed to a “harder” life, in the villages they make and find their own food, in the United States whenever people run out of food in their refrigerator they go to the supermarket and buy food. In Ishmael’s native country of Sierra Leone he doesn’t live near supermarkets, he doesn’t have gas stations where he can go in and buy a snack he doesn’t have the luxuries that America does, which is why it is so much harder for him to be on his own. Ishmael is closer to absolute poverty than anyone since he lives in an already impoverished

In the novel Little Women by: Louisa May Alcott, a common theme is expressed throughout. To the family in this story, each other is the only thing that matters, therefore, displaying the message family is the most important thing you can have in your life. The four sisters, Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy, belong to a very poor family in which the father is away at the military, leaving their mother alone to care for the children. The mother works very hard, but still can not manage to create a solid income for their family. The four sisters understand how hard their mother works

Fela Bernstein was a teenager when she was liberated by the British on April 15, 1945 from the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. This was the first camp this particular British unit had found. In Ben Shephard’s book The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of The Second World War, he tells that one British officer wrote of Belsen after his arrival there, “I have never seen so many criminal-looking faces bundled together as I did at Belsen.” Bernstein remembers the jubilation felt by those in the camp and the silence that befell the soldiers at their first sight of what horrors the war had wrought. Never had these soldiers seen anything like what they encountered at the Nazi concentration camps. A captivating documentary that thoroughly discusses this subject comes from the director Mark Jonathan Harris. This film, The Long Way Home, gives first-hand accounts from both the Jews and the soldiers that were there and shows graphic shots of hollow faces and stacks of dead bodies, there are estimates of at least 13,000 dead bodies that had to be buried in Belsen alone . There was also more sick and dying people by the hundreds, even thousands at some camps. The first thing many of the Allied soldiers did was feed the survivors only resulting in more deaths as many ruptured their stomachs engorging themselves after having little to nothing to eat for a protracted amount of time. Now that, liberation had finally came and redemption in the form of the Allied forces was given what was to

The children in the story do not seem to be affected by this very much, since they have all pretty much lived there entire lives like this, except “T” who comes from an “upper class” family but is forced into poverty by the war. To him and the other boys in the story money seems to be of no great significance. The awkward thing about the family in “Rocking Horse Winner” is that they all maintain an “upper class” status even though they are short on money. This is hard on the family especially the mother who can feel no love because of the stress that has been forced upon her heart. The family still maintains there lifestyle as members of the “upper class” even though the line of money continues to get shorter and shorter.