Long Way Gone Propaganda

"You just don 't know," she said. "You hide in this little fortress, behind wire and sandbags, and you don 't know what it 's all about. Sometimes I want to eat this place. Vietnam. I want to swallow the whole country—the dirt, the death—I just want to eat it and have it there inside me. That 's how I feel. It 's like . . . this appetite. I get scared sometimes—lots of times—but it 's not bad. You know? I feel close to myself. When I 'm out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it 's like I 'm full of electricity and I 'm glowing in the dark—I 'm on fire almost—I 'm burning away into nothing—but it doesn 't matter because I know exactly who I am. You can 't feel like that anywhere else."” (O’ Brien 80-81). Tim O’ Brien shows how being in contact with the war can change a person so pure and innocent to a person who isn’t in connection with themselves and is forever trapped inside their own mind. Also it shows how the people who can’t handle the rough environment of war can have a terrible reaction and loose themselves. He also shows how the war changes you mentally making it hard for you to tell if the is the real you or just a persona you took when you couldn’t handle it anymore and needed to mask your broken soul.

War is a traumatizing experience for anyone, but especially for children. A Long Way Gone demonstrates how a child’s innocence can be taken away

Even though the soldiers join the war as naive youths, the war rapidly changes them and they develop into young men. Surrounded by death, the boys are bound to foresee the fragility of their own lives and are stripped of the carelessness and brazenness of youth. The dreadful horrors around the boys bound them to consider a world that does not accommodate to their childish and simplistic view. They want to only see a separation between what is right and what is wrong, they instead find moral doubt. Where they had wanted to see order and meaning, they only found senselessness and disorder. Where they wanted to find heroism, they only found the selfish instinct of self-preservation. These realizations destroyed the innocence of the boys, maturing and thrusting them into their manhood.

Over the past few decades, the war changed everyone’s perspective. According to NCBI, 61% civilians suffer from psychological disorders caused by wars. Specifically, two books, Night and Persepolis, talks about the author experiences during the war and their struggles. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, documents his childhood when he was maltreated by the Nazis, and Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, share her experiences during the Iraq-Iran war of how it change her. War changes childhood because of near-death experiences, family departure, and witness horrific acts of violence.

Even though soldiers are able to distract themselves from the horrors that they witness on the front, war psychologically damages them and creates the “lost generation”. The young men find it increasingly difficult to think and act with the mindset of a civilian. In war, the men only experience despair, death, and fear, so their mind is enveloped by negative thoughts that

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

From a simple ribbon affixed on the back of a pick-up truck with the words “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” to tough-as-nails, stern Uncle Sam, war propaganda has always been present throughout history. But this type of propaganda differs from the actual experience of war; it glamorizes the entire idea to instill support. However, in the novel A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, his experience with war as a boy soldier is anything but glamorous. Young and with fleeting innocence, his form of propaganda came from the corporal of the army, ingraining the idea to “visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you” (Beah 112). As his experience

Commonalities can be pulled from the use of propaganda and revenge to indoctrination and even inspiration. These children did not require eloquence. Their refuge was found often after months of running, witnessing countless atrocities and feeling the helpless vulnerability of having no security in their lives. If the war did not kill these children out rightly, starvation would. As we read in these sobering memoirs even those who, like Ismael Beah, survived the lack of food, protection and stability still fell victim to the death of their childhood, their families and all the things that should have formed their identities as adults. Lost in revenge that hardened their souls, drugs that dulled their emotions and alter egos who encouraged their violent acts these child soldiers were truly lost to the war that took all they held dear. Though Ishmael Beah could be considered one of the lucky ones, his personal losses were no less severe than a sort of death “All the way up to the neck there are bullet holes. . . I lift the cloth from the body’s face. I am looking at my own” (Beah 19). This book gives insight into a culture, time, and events that would be impossible to adequately capture in a history book. Too often we read such stories as fiction. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism of the mind that ensures protection over the reader that one can read of a horrific event and later run errands and make dinners. Upon reading Beah’s book, it seems impossible to remain distant from Ishmael’s plight. He is not an ambiguous character in history; he suddenly becomes a son, a brother or a friend. This is a valuable perspective, especially for those who enjoy security and plentiful resources as most Americans do. In spite of the unsettling nature of this book, perhaps even because of it, there is importance in reading and understanding it not only in the context of these events of war in Sierra Leone but also in a grander context of a

War impacts many people. Some of those people are more vulnerable than other. The book A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, gives the readers insight into war’s horrid crimes. Within Sierra Leone, where the book takes place, a young boy is separated from his family during a civil war. He is then captured and is forced to fight in the war. Ishmael, the young boy, the author, shows traits of not only a victim, but also a victimizer. He falls victim to being forced into fighting within the war, but he also puts innocent people in danger and harm.

“Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them inside my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head. Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people.” (Beah 119). This is one of the most powerful quotes in the book. As you’re reading you understand that this is just the beginning and it only gets worse from here on out. This is the life of a child soldier.

The child soldiers were constantly being brainwashed and drugged. Also, they didn’t know what they were doing. In the (1st or 2nd movie) Ishmael Baeh, a boy who joined the military at age 13, had mentioned how they gave them drugs, such as cocaine and brown brown which is a mix between gunpowder and cocaine. The commanders would give them drugs to keep them moving throughout the war. They brainwashed them to make them keep on fighting in the war. This proves that they are victims because they were being drugged and had no idea what they were doing. They couldn’t control themselves. The drugs made them numb and emotionless, so when they shot someone it didn’t really process through to them what they were really doing. They would be able to fight without realizing all of the killing that’s going on around them. Imagine being Ishmael Baeh who was only 13 years old and being drugged with

War, in and of itself, is an atrocity, but it becomes even more abhorrent when children are pulled into the conflict. Unfortunately, some military groups find children useful in the war effort. The wars these children are forced to be part of often leave wounds--both psychological and physical, but these kids can be healed, at least to an extent, and rehabilitated. Children are often used in war because it is easy and efficient to use them as compared to their adult counterparts. For one, children are easy to control, coerce, and indoctrinate.

Paul Bäumer, at the age of 19 lives in a world where killing is the only way to live, and one of a friend would be no different, but yet a common occurrence. No longer does he or any of the solders consider themselves as the mere teenagers they once were when entering the army. “We are none of us more than twenty years old,” he says. “But young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk” (18).

What are child soldiers? Child soldiers are people under eighteen who partake in either a regular or irregular armed group in any way. According to Warchild there are an estimated 250,000 child soldiers in the world and often as a part of their recruitment they are forced to either kill or maim a loved one so that they cannot go back home. In Ishmael Beah’s novel A Long Way Gone (Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) the author recounts his life as a child soldier fighting on the government side in Sierra Leone from age thirteen to sixteen. This paper will be attempting to answer the questions of why certain armed groups use children, why it is wrong to do so, and how people are taking a stand to stop it.

Although the glorification of being your “nations hero and fighting” for your country may seem worthwhile, it can lead to major metal and physical destruction. Similar to the First World War, the suffering of soldiers still evident. It’s inevitable that war has always caused struggles, and will continue to do so. War’s abominable pain is a burden on almost everyone, and it is nearly impossible to escape. Erich Richard’s Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front describes life of the soldiers during world war one and the toll it takes on them.