A long way gone by Ishmael Beah, attempts to evoke a powerful response from the leader, by using vivid descriptions to show how he has become emotionally traumatized by the acts of violence in the war. The reader then sympathizes with Ishmael and begins to understand the lasting and deep, emotional pain that Ishmael deals with on a daily basis. The book is based on actual events and is expressed through a personal point of view. Ishmael wrote a memoir that tells the story of a young boy who is torn from his peaceful life, and then forced into a frightening world of drugs and slavery. In writing about his experiences, he has made the decision to present his experiences in a particular way by missing out details and recounting others. This …show more content…
Ishmael Beah is described as a pre-teen, with a love of rap and hip-hop music. He finishes as a drug-addicted killing machine, out avenging the death of his entire family. Before being rescued by a United Nations Program, and eventually fleeing to New York for rehabilitation, it is a tragic and harrowing tale that gives substance to the term ‘Boy Soldier’, that isn’t really understood in most cases. Ishmael gives a gentle portrayal of his life, before the war reached his small village and forever changed his life. Abruptly he becomes fugitive fleeing for his life and eventually into a corrupted teen. His replica of the small details in his life, assist to highlight the tremendous changes he undergoes to become a child soldier. Here the detailed descriptions of loading the guns, attacking others, and the unending cycle of killing and death are interspersed with bland scenarios about his internal musings. Instead of being able to consider his ambitions of performing in a local talent quest, he is traumatized by the nightmares or flashbacks of being a ‘green snake’, the most effective killing machine he once was. 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,
Ishmael acts like all the older soldiers by doing drugs, watching war movies and never sleeping just like they do. He acts this new way only because of who he’s surrounded and influenced by. Now in the novel, Ishmael’s character is changing completely. From a considerate, playful, young child; he’s now a ruthless, animal-like killing machine for the government
Throughout the novel, Ishmael and his friends begin to those their humanity and become completely different individuals because of their exposure to the war. The
While being face to face with war, Ishmael illustrates what he, as well as his life, has become, “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector and my rule was to kill or be killed…” (Beah, p.126). With these declarations, the reader can clearly comprehend his lack of innocence and empathy. He has become a unfeeling, cold-blooded soldier trained to kill or be killed and survival is his ultimate goal. Later on in the book, the reader is informed of the barbaric scene that takes place in Benin Home, a rehabilitation center. When Ishmael arrives at this site, he ruthlessly interrogates a couple of his housemates “I took out my grenade and put my fingers inside the pin. 'Do you boys want this to be your last meal, or do you want to answer his question?”(Beah, p.133). Undoubtedly, this is not normal behavior for a 15-year old and when he displays this conduct, it can be unquestionably said that Ishmael has lost all sense of innocence and emotion. In this section of his story, Ishmael is threatening to kill boys his own age, which shows how deviated he has become from his original character and sense. Both of these examples verify that Ishmael Beah in nowhere near the innocent, rap-enthusiast and family loving boy he once was. The child that was Ishmael Beah is now dead, and in his place stands a cold-hearted
While Ishmael was running and trying to find survival, he pushed through to be strong, he may have been scared of the situation he was in, but he had hope to keep going. Ishmael was scared because he was running away from the Rebels in the war, trying to survive. Ishmael was also trying to have hope in surviving, he
After some time as as a child soldier Ishmael thought he had finally found his place. He
Throughout the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael faces a plentiful amount of challenges and conflicts. In the book there are four main conflicts that Ishmael faces and overcomes. These conflicts include Ishmael running away from the war, his family, and his friends, Ishmael's entire family dying and him becoming a soldier at the age of 13, Ishmael going through rehabilitation, and Ishmael trying to move to a safer area when war meets Freetown.
Ishmael Beah was a young boy when his world turned upside down after Sierra Leone was attacked by rebels. He had lost the most important thing in his life, his family. He and his brother Junior set out to find a safe haven during the war. While they were staying in a village, it was attacked by the rebels. He and Junior were separated and he has to embark on this dreadful journey with strangers. He survived many attacks on different villages and finally made it to the safe
I know I can’t even imagine what type of problem that these kid soldiers had to overcome not just to survive but to become normal people again. Although things didn’t go as well as Ishmael Beah planned for his life. I was amazed by his courage and inspired that someone who could go through all that crazy stuff and fight through it to still be successful. I think you should read the book also it’s a good reminder that if he can go from kid soldier to a New York author then our possibilities are limitless
Ishmael Beah was at the age of thirteen when his childhood and innocence was taken from him. For example, Beah says “My childhood had gone without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen”(30). It happened so quickly. He was frantic with worry. Beah was forced to join the Sierra Leone military. It was not until later he himself started to believe he has lost his innocence. At this young age he was killing the rebels that traumatized him purely to seek revenge and to survive. His hate for the rebels was very strong, “Whenever I looked at the rebels during raids, I got angrier, because they looked like the rebels who played cards in the ruins of the village where I had lost my family. So when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many
Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A long Way Gone, is very descriptive and has a very effective way of painting a picture in the reader’s mind of what he went through as a boy soldier. Throughout the memoir, Beah used quite a few statements that impacted me emotionally, on a personal level. His vivid detail, word choice and how personal, yet professional he kept his writing led me to understand how exactly the war affected him, and everyone else who lived, and lives, in Sierra Leone.
Ishmael Beah's memoir "a Long Way Gone" is a true story about his early life and his experience in the war in Sierra Leone as a child soldier. There are many symbols, figures of speech and images used in Beah's memoir. Interchangeably, there are relationships between all three of these terms in the book. In "a Long Way Gone" Symbolism, Images and figures of speech convey a very moody message to the reader, based upon what they are reading. These literary building blocks helped shape the memoir and keep the reader engaged throughout it.
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
When most people of think of war, they generally think of the glorified aspects. Love and violence. Or perhaps their minds are drawn to an image of a soldier’s homecoming: A father embracing his son, crying tears of joy, all while the solider relays his experiences of the war among celebratory decorations. He is now considered a hero. But what difficulties has he faced to get there? This is the side of war that many of us don’t recognize. In the memoir, A Long Way Gone, author and protagonist, Ishmael Beah, experiences civil war and its effects first hand when he is forced into becoming a child soldier in the poor third world country of Sierra Leone. As the novel progresses, Ishmael becomes increasingly addicted to drugs,
In the memoir of Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Beah states that his life’s journey has been a huge obstacle, but has learned to overcome that struggle by venting while the two contradictory sides continue their battling. Beah accomplishes his goal of explaining to the reader his point of view through the use of rhetorical questions, scenic narration, and parallelism. Ishmael Beah’s apparent purpose is to share personal accounts of his life with his fellow country men, in a country where war affects people to a level beyond the imagination. He is able to apply his purpose using a grotesque and bitter tone. Beah approaches his audience of ordinary people in this manner in order to vent his feelings about war by
After his home was attacked, he fled away to the only escape route out of town. In fact, “Everyone headed for it” (24). He was no longer living like a normal boy, instead, he now is a wanderer without a home. Instead of gaining friends now, he began losing them. His friend once ate an animal and then “Saidu’s body was washed and prepared for burial the next day” (85). Ishmael lost his closest friends to him because of the war. Never in his life had he lost someone close to him like that, and especially not because of war. Not only that, Ishmael joined the army. He was forced to do so in order to live. He used to be innocent and not have to join any war but now, “With trembling hands I took the gun, saluted him, and ran to the back of the line, still holding the gun but afraid to look at it" (111). Ishmael is now carrying a gun and has joined the military to kill the enemy. An army is a place where you are trained to kill, and now Ishmael, only a boy, is joining that group. Not only that, Ishmael also took various drugs. Some days the only things he ate was “...sardines and corned beef with gar, sniff cocaine, brown brown, and take some white capsules” (122). He could not get off of them and would do anything to get more. He had never taken drugs before, but now he was addicted to them and would not get off of them. But, by far, the largest transformation is that Ishmael began to kill people. He once played a “game” where