Examples Of Innocence In A Long Way Gone

His memories show the readers parts of his past before having to flee for his life or even before, he was recruited into the army. “When I was very little my father used to say, “If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die”” (54) Beah claims shortly after this flashback that the words of his father are what kept his spirit alive after every horror that he had witnessed. Beah had joined a group of boys during his journey and had said, “Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters” (55). During the time, the sight of seven boys all together caused fear for anyone the group of boys came by. After all the boys could have been spies or rebels. “Fear is healthy…Panic is dangerous” (Chasing Mavericks). Throughout the memoir, the boys are attacked by panic of many people. Going back on

There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of these child soldiers  , Ishmael Beah is a child who lived most of his childhood in the war   . He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words according to  http://www.alongwaygone.com/index.html and his memoir “A Long Way Gone”. The war had made ishmael have perseverance  in the long run , inference that he was brainwashed by the war and that ishmael was a very hopeful child always wishing for better days.

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.

innocence. Beah’s parents are burned alive by the rebels; this is the first step towards his animosity

Bang! Bang! “At that instant several gunshots, which sounded like thunder striking the tin-roofed houses, took over town. The sound of guns was so terrifying it confused everyone” (Beah 23). In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys his amazing journey through war and hardship as a child soldier. Sierra Leone--a country on the western coast of Africa--was embroiled in a bloody civil war in the 1990’s. Battles multiplied as bloodshed abounded and as a child, Ishmael Beah was forced to survive, find food, and face unimaginable dangers. Running from the battle front was also a routine ordeal. At age 13 Beah was captured by the military and brainwashed into using guns and drugs. As a child soldier, he perpetrated and witnessed a great deal of violence. At 15 he was rescued and taken to a rehabilitation center. With time and continual treatment, Beah was able to recover, to some extent, and reconnect with his Uncle Tommy, who adopted him. He was later chosen to speak to the United Nations in New York City about his experiences as a child soldier. When he returned to Sierra Leone, war broke out throughout the city where he lived, causing many deaths including his Uncle Tommy. Eventually Beah escaped Sierra Leone and managed to reach New York City, where he began a new life. Through the book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys a central theme of having to survive, at a young age, through the hardships of war with the use of imagery.

Beah is ask with other boys to fight for the government in a village they were taken to. The government force was beginning to dwindle and the rebels had the village surrounded. In this scene we see the lieutenant have to make a decision. Either have the village taken by the rebels and more than likely everyone dies or recruit the boys to fight. The lieutenant let anyone

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

The final thing that encapsulated Ishmael Beah that was a symbol in A Long Way Gone was drugs, which

In the introduction of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he writes, “There were all kinds of stories told about the war that made it sound as if it was happening in a faraway and different land. It wasn’t until refugees started passing through our town that we began to see that it was actually taking place in our country” (Beah 1). During this statement Beah says that he is completely oblivious to the war around him. These people living in Sierra Leone had adapted to the war to the point where their perception had been altered. With this memoir he shares his experiences and obstacles he faces throughout the war to become a beckon of hope in this despairing country. Ishmael uses his social skills, timely luck, and emotional strength, to find the courage to overcome these adversities and survive in and out of the war.

In order to acclimate children to war and mold them into effective killing machines, Lieutenant Jabati and his men employ several different tacts: drugs, pop culture, and several modes of emotional manipulation. Being forced into a national army, Beah learns to adapt his body to several drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and several other drugs (Mackey 116). Beah is taking drugs in order to numb his mind for upcoming and past raids. Additionally, he describes the multitude of drugs he and other children take to make traumatizing moments bearable. Beah describes his first raid by explaining how he “took turns at the guarding posts around the village, 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” (Beah 121). Without the drugs, Beah becomes aggressive and the boys resort to raiding the hospital to quell their hunger. When the drugs wear off, Beah’s headaches return and so do the images of slaughter. Due to children having to fight in combat for Sierra Leone, children often became addicted to drugs thus, hurting their childhood and eventual future. Child soldiers in Africa were often drugged for battle, but often faced side effects that they were not accustomed to. (Goyal 31). When Beah is

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

As a soldier, Beah was brainwashed into thinking that the life he was living was perfectly normal. He explains, “We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity… In my head my life was normal” (126). He thought that killing people was a normal activity to do, so he thought no wrong of it. Also, when he was exposed to drugs, he was told that they would make him a better soldier.

This was the beginning of a new life for Beah; nonetheless, this would be one of the hardest experiences that Beah will go through. For instance, Beah was not used to civilians ordering him around. For example, he even became angry when they would inform him that breakfast was about to be served. One requirement of the center was that each child received medical follow-ups and a one-on-one session with a counselor. The boys refused to do this and acted out in delinquent behaviors. For instance, the boys threw boys, chairs, food, and utensils at the staff. The boys acted out because they were not used to being told what to do by civilians and they craved drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. As time went on, Beah became more frustrated and violent

We as children as a population are born with a miniscule set of abilities that either stay throughout our existence, or pave the path for our future while slowly deteriorating away. This is the dismal fate that a young one's innocence will take as they age and experience new trials. What ends up defining a person does not depend on if they lose their innocence, as this will be an occurrence in our society as a whole, but rather what will terminate the bond between the child and their blissful gift that is innocence. This will differ from child to child, as does the magnitude of what they lose. As is the case between the two main characters found in The Bite of the Mango and A Long Way Gone. Mariatu Kamara and Ishmael Beah both lose their purity

Each new village brings either hopelessness, isolation, or hostility. Beah feels that there is no place for him to call "home" any longer, and fears that such a place may never exist in his future. He must start "over and over again" with each new day, and keep moving to avoid both the rebels and their terrified victims. "One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn't sure when or where it was going to end. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I felt that I was starting over and over again" (p. 89 pdf). For Ishmael and other war victims, there can be no rest. Ishmael’s only goal now is to live through each