Rhetorical Analysis: A Long Way Gone Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier

“When I was seven I had an answer to this question that made sense to me….if I was the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament” (Beah 218). A Long Way Gone is a memoir of a child soldier who is the author himself Ishmael Beah. Beah around the ages of twelve to thirteen grew up in Sierra Leone during its civil war. During his story, Beah talks in a tone that is straight to the point, however many devices help the reader imagine his loss of innocence. Beah uses a series of flashbacks, symbols and motifs to illustrate his loss to his readers.

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.

C3. A quotation that stands out to me in All Quiet on the Western Front is, “But on the last day astonishing number of English heavies opened up on us with high-explosive drumming ceaselessly on our position, so that we suffered severely and came back only eighty strong” (14). This quote is significant because it suggests that more than half of the Second Company has been killed. Paul Bäumer’s tone suggests that various deaths are something

In the story, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael’s life experiences while escaping the war show how everything in life should be cherished, because one day those great features are there but they can easily be taken away. Ishmael Beah has experienced the traumatizing effect of war and how it can tear someone apart and morph them into a completely different person. This happened to Ishmael himself. He was brainwashed and his mind was molded into believing that revenge is the answer to the deaths of his family members. This essentially is why he puts his safety and wellbeing at risk. He goes from being a twelve year old boy who heard stories of the war, but never imagined it chasing after him, to running away from this inescapable war only

A prominent theme in A Long Way Gone is about the loss of innocence from the involvement in the war. A Long Way Gone is the memoir of a young boy, Ishmael Beah, wanders in Sierra Leone who struggles for survival. Hoping to survive, he ended up raiding villages from the rebels and killing everyone. One theme in A long Way Gone is that war give innocent people the lust for revenge, destroys childhood and war became part of their daily life.

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 the article “War Against Boys?”, I noticed two common and reappearing rhetorical appeals, pathos and logos. The reason I chose both of these appeals is because of how Michael Kimmel thinks about how gender inequality affects boys and how this is affecting boys education in lower and higher institutions. Pathos played a huge part in this essay because of the emotional and mental impact on boys through discrimination from the school system. One example of pathos being shown is when feminism was mentioned pathologizing boyhood making boys think what is normal , another way pathos was being shown is when gender stereotyping was stated to be hurting both girls and boys (Michael 522-523). Like pathos, logos was also seen throughout the article as well. The first logos that was shown was when statistician Tom Mortensen stated that “ the graduation line 2068 will be all females”(Michael 522). Another example of logos was the statistics of gender imbalance throughout the higher educational system.

The book I chose to read for my summer reading assignment was A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. By judging this book by its title, I knew it was going to be a nonfiction piece focusing on one person’s experience on this gruesome topic. I expected this novel to graphic and eye opening about the life of a child soldier.

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

Society often masks the true horrors of war in order to promote patriotism. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque captures the reality of war through the horrific imagery, which he portrays through similes. The narrator, nineteen-year-old Paul Bäumer, and his comrades look over the trenches to witness horse suffering in no man’s land. Prior to ending the horse’s misery, the soldiers see the last one “[prop] itself on its forelegs and [drag] itself round in a circle like a merry-go-round” (Remarque 64). Remarque compares the dying horse to a merry-go-round to create situational irony through imagery. Associated with happiness and nostalgia, merry-go-rounds portray purity as they are ironically compared to a tortured

Marlantes expresses the quote “The ideal response to killing in war should be similar to a mercy killing, sadness mingled with respect” (Page 42) because he wants to proclaim how his reaction to killing really is and what others expected it to be. Most of the time when he was killing in combat, he felt either nothing or a kind of exhilaration. This was not the answer most people wanted to hear, he acknowledges, and he hesitated giving it when he returned from Vietnam afraid he would appear to be indifferent or overzealous, as some protestors of the war portrayed those who fought in it. Several years later, Marlantes says that he is deeply saddened by the deaths that he has caused. Marlantes found a different feeling than every other soldier

During my reading of the Biography a long way gone by Ishmael Beah, there are many character developments shown of him and a few of his acquaintances based on the setting and situation that they are in such as the deaths and traumatic events happening to their loved ones. There are also a few themes I found present while reading the first half of this book such as: Survival, this theme is almost constantly present after the rebels start attacking nearby villages. Another is life and hope, this goes along with the previous theme and is discussed by the boys several times over their travels. Another theme I have noticed so far is family. Ishmael is constantly trying to keep his family together by constantly making sure his brother is with him and asking people in villages if they have seen his parents. The last theme I noticed was the horrors of war, this theme is present whenever the fighting is currently happening or whenever the main character has flashbacks of the horrors of war.

A Long Way Gone shows the struggles Ishmael Beah faces as a young soldier. A Long Way Gone has many turning points throughout the story. In Chapter 12, Ishmael and his companions are forced to become child warriors. The horror of war is a common theme all through this section as Ishmael and the rest of his friends confront an unimaginable decision, fighting in the army. If they decide to escape the village's protection, they are taking a huge risk of being attacked and killed by the rebels. This demonstrates that in times of war, individuals are compelled to pick among terrible choices that are frequently adverse to another person. Before joining the army, Ishmael was very innocent and could not even stand looking at any dead bodies. Due to

I cannot believe the recent speech given by our Führer! He mentioned about his visions of war for race and space, and also the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe (Bergen “Chapter 5”). Yet, I do not understand a single word that comes out of his mouth. Is he really intending for a second world war to occur? Have the Germans not learned their lesson from the First World War? The moment I heard his speech, my entire body went numb. I can no longer despise our Führer, for I am more frightened of the war. Few days ago, he has attacked Poland and has caused great destruction among the people. I received letters from my friend in Poland who described to me the complete demolition of the cities there. She witnessed the sky full of Luftwaffe,

The heartbreaking, nonfiction novel was written by Ishmael Beah one of the many children, forced to commit countless, unspeakable sins. A long way Gone successfully represents the issue of child soldiers, through a first-person recount, in which the author employs the use of powerful emotive narrative to encapsulate the suffering and the pain of child soldiers, allowing the readers to gain insight into the daily struggles of child soldiers and to convey the feelings of sorrow, anguish and loss. The first person technique effectively positions the audience as it evokes empathy, conveying his innermost thoughts and emotions throughout the story. Beah perfectly entailed the life of a child soldier, conveying the pain and struggles faced by child soldiers, furthermore, it’s through his pain that he’s manipulated into becoming a child soldier and joining the army to rid his country of the rebels. This is evident in chapter 12 “They do not deserve to live. That is why we must kill every single one of them, We must kill them all. We must make sure they never walk this earth again.” Beah is listening to the lieutenant's speech, his mind slowly siding with the armies, thus sparking his descent into hell becoming a war machine, a ruthless killer manipulated by the government to be used as tools for