Power Struggle In Ishmael

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

In history, humans have influenced ways to abuse each other in hateful ways. Because of hate, all miserable things that happen to people relates to mob mentality. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel states, “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.” Throughout history, humanity has seen dignified people pursuing horrendous actions because these individuals got caught up in mob mentality.

A Long Way Gone is a novel written by Ishmael Beah. He’s a child who lost everything extremely valuable to him, due to war. Ishmael uses imagery, descriptive writing, and emotions to show the challenges it took to survive the war. As the war goes on, Ishmael describes the changes of how Mogbwemo, the village he was raised in, and his neighborhood, of how it went from peaceful to violence, and how the war had impact him and the people of Sierra Leone.

He was finally free, no joy filled his heart but abandonment was drowning it. How dangerous is indifference to humankind as it pertains to suffering and the need for conscience understanding when people are faced with unjust behaviors? Elie Wiesel is an award winning author and novelist who has endured and survived hardships. One of the darkest times in history, a massacre of over six million Jews, the Holocaust and Hitler himself. After the Holocaust he went on and wrote the internationally acclaimed memoir “Night,” in which he spoke out against persecution and injustice across the world. In the compassionate yet pleading speech, ¨Perils of Indifference,¨ Elie Wiesel analyzes the injustices that himself and others endured during the twentieth century, as well as the hellish acts of the Holocaust through effective rhetorical choices.

After some time as as a child soldier Ishmael thought he had finally found his place. He

To start off, all of Ishmael’s problems stem from his original conflict when he has to run away from the war, his family, and his friends. The origin of the situation was when the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) attacking his home city of Mogbwemo (where his parents were). Later on in the month the rebels attack Mattru Jong (where

After being cooped up in squalor and surrounded by torture for four years, the prisoners couldn’t grasp the concept of their own freedom: “Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours” (88). They had looked forward to it so much that when it came it was almost like an anti-climax. The freed prisoners also had a strong desire for retribution: “They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences” (90). Frankl went onto refute this by saying, “that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them” (91). Moreover, the prisoners had kept positive in the camps by thinking that they will see their loved ones upon release. Sadly, for many they found that “the person who should open the door was not there, and would never be there again” (92). To these people Frankl imposed the idea that even suffering has a meaning in life; that it is the individual’s responsibility to overcome it and keep fighting on until their last breath. Ultimately, “there is nothing he need fear anymore-except his God” (93).

During World War II from 1933 to 1945 in Europe, horrifying systematic events took place were millions of innocent people were tortured and killed based on their religious views, culture, and sexual orientation. The Nazi’s under the command of Adolf Hitler committed these crimes. These horrifying systematic events that took place are known as the Holocaust. The following texts Elie Wiesel’s Night, Eve Bunting’s Terrible Things, and Martin Niemoller First They Came all convey how the surrounding public during World War II stayed silent and didn't stand up for the people who were being oppressed. All three of these texts explains why it is highly important to stop indifference and inaction. Indifference can lead to horrific actions; those actions can probably lead to the genocide of an entire group, furthermore the inaction of a bystander can not only affect and hurt the victim but can also strongly affect the bystander, and finally inaction against oppression can harm and devastate many lives.

Within human nature there is a want to act against the corruption and evils of society. A human’s moral compass directs each person to fight against what is considered evil and to praise everything that is believed to be good. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (The Devil Came on Horseback). This means that in order for humans to rise above the evils of the world, good men have to take action against those who have committed a wrong. “Not a cry of distress, not a groan, nothing but a mass agony, in silence.”(pg.84). Due to Elie and the other Jews submission to the powerful Nazis, the dehumanization of the Jews remained

2. What does Ishmael mean on page 91, when he says, “the world of thought is coterminous with your culture”?

A quote from Albert Einstein states “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. As difficult as it is to describe the terrible deeds of those who were part of the Holocaust, it is true that those who did nothing are at fault just as much as those who carried out the actions. When one thinks of the Holocaust today it is difficult to picture that such events were done by human beings. Societies have advanced but it is important to acknowledge the reason as to why many bystanders refused to help or why they were so indifferent to the pain felt by the Jews. “The psychological mechanisms used to come to terms with the suffering of another appear to be very similar, whether the person is standing right before us or is 2,000 miles away. (Barnet:118) Barnett explains that ideological and moral principles also come into play, as do self-interest and the weighing of the possible consequences of our actions. We try to establish what is or is not possible. In the end, our decision will be determined not so much by whether we actually have the power to change a situation, but whether we have the will to do so. (Barnett, 118). In the case of many of the individuals who chose to become bystanders rather than change the situation they were not willing to get involved. Although not every German was a bystander, those who

The conflict perspective originating from ideas of Karl Marx, is a macro overview of competition for limited resources and how the elite or government control the weak. People are then impacted by the creation of social structures, and the usual result is a differential of power between the "elite" and the "others". Conflict perspective focus is the elite 's goal to keep creating the divide between us and them from distribution of resources, power, and inequality.

Botwinick writes in A History of the Holocaust, “The principle that resistance to evil was a moral duty did not exist for the vast majority of Germans. Not until the end of the war did men like Martin Niemoeller and Elie Wiesel arouse the world’s conscience to the realization that the bystander cannot escape guilt or shame” (pg. 45). In The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick writes of a world where Niemoeller and Wiesel’s voices never would have surfaced and in which Germany not only never would have repented for the Holocaust, but would have prided

Man’s development of “bad conscience” is a complicated process that sees its beginnings in slave morality’s doubling of the doer and the deed. According to Nietzsche, the slave (the weaker man) had developed ressentiment towards the noble (the stronger man), labeling the noble as evil and blaming him for slave’s suffering (20-22). The slave separated the noble (the doer) from his instinctive actions (the deeds) and claimed the noble possessed “free will;” the slave believed “the strong are free to be weak” (26). The slave set up the ideal of his own weak and passive instincts being “good” and the strong and active instincts of the nobles being “evil” (26-27). As stated by JHarden, when defining his weakness as good, “the slave turned [his] natural condition of suffering at the hands of others into a condition which should be desired” (JHarden). As religions developed, and the slave morality became dominant, this ideal of good and evil prevailed and forced man to become conscious of his instincts as separate from himself, something he could control.