Imagine your parents being killed when you are at a young age, then having to be forced to carry a weapon and kill or be killed. This was a story of Ishmael Beah, as told in the A Long Way Gone. A Long Way Gone is the true story, about a young boy who becomes an unwilling child soldier during a civil war in Sierra Leone. When he is twelve years old, His village is attacked by the Rebels the R.U.F. while he is away performing in a rap group with friends. Among the confusion, violence, and the war, Ishmael, his brother, and his friends wander from village to village in search of food and shelter. Their day-to-day existence is a struggle of survival, and the boys find themselves committing acts they would never have believed themselves capable
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Long Way Gone touches on the remarkable true story of Ishmael Beah. In 1993 Sierra Leone was experiencing its own Civil War. Ishmael was only 12 years old when he survived the attack on his village as a result to his country’s crisis. In the process of losing his home Ishmael lost his family, and childhood. He was expected to fend for himself and hold on to the little he had as he wandered from village to village. The life of a boy who once played with sand changed within a blink of an eye. Ishmael began to witness an endless amount of blood and violence as he was recruited to be a boy soldier fighting his country’s war. Life for Ishmael was never the same and he lives today to recount the events.
In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah, a soldier with the Sierra Leone army during its civil war, has many life changing events that he has to live with forever. Ishmael is taken far away from his childhood dreams when an unexpected civil war breaks out in his hometown. Ishmael had a loss of innocence when he was younger which caused him to become what he became. Ishmael was a young boy who was introduced to war at 12 years old. He lost friends and experienced the horrific results from the rebels attacks.
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, published by Sarah Crichton Books in New York in 2007, tells the haunting story of Ishmael Beah, a child soldier during the Sierra Leone Civil War. The book begins in January of 1993 in Ishmael’s small village called Mogbwemo, located near Mattru Jong, Sierra Leone. A Long Way Gone addresses a plethora of geographical issues such as refugees and population movements, child exploitation, and most of all: war. Each of these issues directly affects Ishmael, the autobiographer. In his book of memoirs, A Long Way Gone, Beah uses his horrendous experiences as a young teenager thrown into the dead heat of civil war to effectively argue that children have a right to their own childhoods, and that children deserve to have their innocence remain in place until they are older, not have it be stolen by the terror of war. His potent encounters and experiences also highlight successfully the undeniable effects that geographical problems are causing not just in Sierra Leone, but across the entire African continent.
War impacts the lives of many people by taking away their families, homes, and old lifestyle in general. People suffer through loss of many valuable things that force them to live a new way that may be hard to adapt to. In the autobiography called A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he writes about his struggles to live through the civil war in Sierra Leone. The author, Ishmael, was very young when the war started. His village was attacked by the Rebels causing his family to run searching for safety and along the way they were split up. Ishmael had to find a way to survive on his own. Along his journey he was found by Africa’s military and forced to join the soldiers. Ishmael had to do many things he regrets while fighting for the military. Ishmael
A Long way Gone, written by Ishmael Beah is a memoir that exposes the reader to a part of the world a majority of people know almost nothing about. An area where life is cut short by conflict and a blatant disregard for the value human life. Where Mothers lose their sons, families lose their homes and people lose their sense of morality. Yet, through these struggles, the resilience of the human spirit and psyche is exposed. Ishmael, through many points in his life was challenged physically, mentally, emotionally and was extremely close to being defeated; changed from the innocent boy he once was into a fiend. Important lessons can be learned from this struggle; Even the worst challenges can be overcome, we should value all that we have because it can all be taken away and also that there is much good and evil in the world we live in.
Many and many child are forced to become soldiers and is becoming a major issue in the global level. A long way gone is a real life story that was faced by Ishmael Beah who became soldier even if he didn’t want to be. He wrote this book to show people around the world, the suffering that child goes through in the war country. He didn’t have any other choices. Ishmael Beah uses imagery, flashback, and narrative techniques to show the condition of the child soldiers is a major issue going on the world through the memoirs “A long way gone”.
A Long Way Gone reflects a child’s ability to survive during harsh times. It’s the story of Ishmael Beah a boy living in Sierra Leone during the time of war. The theme of this story is survival, and how adaptable human beings can be to any situation. Ishmael gets separated from his parents at a very young age. He is left to be with his friends since the rebels have entered their town of Mattru Jong. Ishmael starts to go through a phase in which he starts losing hope in life. He feels as though he has lost himself completely. The story signifies getting back up and putting life back together no matter the damage done. Ishmael is able to recover from his life during the war, and he creates a new life for himself.
Recently, everyone has begun to wonder the same thing: why are so many leaders so… corrupt? Why do they care only about a miniscule group of people, throwing aside morals altogether? The feeling of power creates a superiority complex, letting power go to a leader’s head and giving them the desire and means to execute terrible things. This is a problem because many people in our world acquire their power because others believe they can improve the world. Once power takes control, they become corrupt. It is essential for the public to understand this because otherwise, people in power will gain this complex.
Ishmael Beah's 2007 memoir, A Long Way Gone, tells the story of a boy who's not so lucky. The book records his real-life experiences as a 12-year-old caught up in a bloody civil war in his home country of Sierra Leone. When his village is attacked by rebel fighters, Ishmael loses his home and family. He's forced to wander around looking for food, hiding in the woods and trying to avoid getting gunned down by soldiers.
“I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality” (Frida Kahlo). Is it true that when war or crime takes place, it is only the fear of reality that causes minds to create nightmares instead of dreams? Ishmael Beah is a historical figure that went through this feeling of deprivation and fear, where he could not tell apart a dream from reality. This appears frequently in his memoir, A Long Way Gone, which is about the civil war near his home, Sierra, Leone. In this war, the rebels were the killers, the ones much like the Nazi’s with no reason to kill. Beah loses his family, and gets brainwashed and loses everything all to become the little boy soldier that he once feared. Throughout, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys the message that sometimes the fear of reality makes it hard to tell apart a nightmare from a real situation.
The book a long way gone by Ishmael Beah, is a masterpiece of a story, the book starts out with him in New York after the war. The next chapter starts with Ishmael in a nightmare of him carrying his own body in a wheelbarrow the book then goes on to tell about him before the war and how he and his friends make a rap group and travel to a city a few miles away for a talent show. They leave the city and find out about how the war reached their home town and are not sure if their families survived so they decide to travel back, and see for themselves, the boys travel for days without food through abandoned villages they do find money and a non-deserted village but no one will sell to them. After walking for