The Making and Unmaking of a Child Soilder Essay

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 Beah had joined a group of boys during his journey and had said, “Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters” (55).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

To be engaged in war is to be engaged in an armed conflict. Death is an all too ordinary product of war. It is an unsolicited reward for many soldiers that are fighting for their country’s own fictitious freedom. For some of these men, the battlefield is a glimpse into hell, and for others, it is a means to heaven. Many people worry about what happens during war and what will become of their loved ones while they’re fighting, but few realize what happens to those soldiers once they come home. The short stories "Soldier's Home” by Ernest Hemingway and "Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien explore the thematic after effects of war and how it impacts a young person's life. Young people who

Despite the violence caused by the children, one of the staffers, Nurse Esther, becomes interested in Ishmael, learning about his childhood love of rap music. As a gift Esther gets him a rap cassette and Walkman, when she takes Ishmael and his friend Alhaji to the city. It is through this connection and his numerous counseling experiences with Esther that Ishmael eventually turns away from his violent self and starts to heal from his mental wounds.

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

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

Throughout the memoir there are many cases of death, some because of health reasons and others for intentional reasons. Through family, anger, and survival of the fittest, Beah makes being responsible for someone else’s death known. After Beah’s long, treacherous journey and being separated from his family, he eventually had the chance to be reunited with his family. “The path zigzagged up to the top, where when we finally made it, everyone had to rest for a few minutes. I became angry that we had to rest, and I sat on a big rock away from the rest of the group” (93). Beah, eager to see his family could no longer wait, progressed to the village only to hear the sounds of villagers shrieking and see the village burn to ashes. The casualties in the village were caused by the rebels. The rebels were aware of their doings and knew what they did was wrong, but they did not seem to care. Although they were following orders, they were still responsible for the passing of every person there. After Beah loses his family he becomes angry with Gasemu and brutally attacks him and blames him for the death of his family. “If we hadn’t stopped to rest on that hill, if we hadn’t run into Gasemu, I would have seen my family, I thought… I got up, walked behind Gasemu, and locked his neck under my arms… I fell next to a pestle. I picked it up and hit Gasemu with it” (95-96). Along with a bloody nose, Gasemu had been shot by one of the rebels and later died. “When we finally got to the wahlee, Gasemu’s eyes were still open. Alhaji closed them. I sat by him. His blood was on my palm and my wrist. I regretted hitting him with the pestle” (99). Although Ishmael was not the one who caused Gasemu to die, he still took responsibility for intentionally hurting him with the pestle and making his nose bleed. After eluding death a numerous amount of times, Ishmael and his friends become soldiers. They began training hard and acting like the other soldiers. The idea of killing any rebel was now locked in

“My Imagination at 10 years old didn’t have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the refugees” (6). A child is naïve, innocent, and can’t grasp the idea of war, much less fathom joining it. So the military must find tactics to rework their minds into apathetic killing machines. In the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah drugs, emotional manipulation, and pop culture are some of the main tactics employed by the militia.

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

Through Beah’s use of questions, the reader is able ponder on the question as if Beah is asking the questions to him or her.

The following citation shows that Beah has to watch the rebels not only destroy the village but destroy lives, and families which gives another reason for Beah for his actions he commits. “According to the teachers, the rebels had attacked the mining areas in the afternoon. The sudden outburst of gunfire had caused people to run for their lives in different directions. Fathers had come running from their workplaces, only to stand in front of their empty houses with no indication of where their families had gone. Mothers wept as they ran toward schools, rivers, and water taps to look for their children. Children ran home to look for parents who were wandering the streets in search of them. And as the gunfire intensified,people gave up looking for their loved ones and ran out of town” (Beah 9). This gives the readers a image of what happened when the rebels entered his village and attack them. As the families were going in different ways and people were killed and houses were set on fire this gives another reason for Beah’s actions since he had to watch something that he loved so much and he grew up knowing as home fall apart so

Beah, at age twelve, was in constant fear after losing his parents and everything that made him feel safe. In Boyd's’ book review on Ishmael Beah's’ memoir, A Long Way Gone, he wrote: “A 12-year-old is conscious only of immediate circumstances, and in Beah’s case the arrival of the rebels in his small town meant sudden separation from his parents and months of indeterminate flight from danger with a handful of other boys” (Boyd 302). From this quote alone you can tell Beah went through a lot more hardships that any aged person can fathom. Everything was thrown at him at once at such a young age. At time where kids are just starting to gain a sense of responsibility, a time where people are most vulnerable. Losing your parents as an adult, let alone a twelve year old child, can destroy someone's mentality.

The war developed him into a different person. Primarily, Beah was arrogant, he did not want help because was did not realize that he needed rehabilitation. “It was infuriating to be told what to do by civilians… [the soldiers] refused to do anything that [they] were asked to do” (138). He refused to receive the aid that was being given to him. He had one nurse, Esther, who he warmed up to and because of her help, Beah had been reconstructed into a new man. She lured him to see her by bribing him with casset tapes of Bob Marley music. He grew to trust Esther as he opened up and told her stories of his past. She encouraged him to leave an affect on the visitors..“‘[Beah] really impressed those visitors. They know now that it is possible for [boys] to be rehabilitated’” (Beah 169). Beah proved to the visitors that he had matured into a better person, he went on to be a spokesman for boy soldiers who were subject to the war. His speeches helped many other boys find a new beginning after seeing how he found his

Psychology involves studying the mental functioning and general behaviors of both humans and animals. Social behavior and mental functioning of an individual are explained by exploring the neurological and physiological processes. These include emotions, cognition, perception, motivation, attention, brain functioning and personality. Child psychology is as well stated to be the application of psychological techniques to children where it involves carrying out research on mental states and development of children. The development of the child both physically, mentally and emotionally, with the help of a parent allows the identification of helpful information to any evolving challenges in child’s behavior and

Social constructionism gives meaning to phenomenon in social context and connections between culture and society build up realities in their circumstances. The studies of this idea have been conducted more than thirty years by a number of North American, British and continental writers (Burr, 1995). However, in childhood studies this notion appears later on. It is mostly held universally, childhood is a stage that biologically existing in human life in early years. It should be considered this childhood is constructed in the society. As a social being, it brings into the mind the relationship between society and child, inevitably. However, the dominant understanding of childhood attributes biological and social

Death is inevitable in every person’s life, but death in these character’s lives is easily predicted to be early, and this represents the sadness and sorrows in the innocence of war. There are many ways to die, and war is the saddest way for that to occur, but at the same time,