The Pros And Cons Of Child Soldiers

While being face to face with war, Ishmael illustrates what he, as well as his life, has become, “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector and my rule was to kill or be killed…” (Beah, p.126). With these declarations, the reader can clearly comprehend his lack of innocence and empathy. He has become a unfeeling, cold-blooded soldier trained to kill or be killed and survival is his ultimate goal. Later on in the book, the reader is informed of the barbaric scene that takes place in Benin Home, a rehabilitation center. When Ishmael arrives at this site, he ruthlessly interrogates a couple of his housemates “I took out my grenade and put my fingers inside the pin. 'Do you boys want this to be your last meal, or do you want to answer his question?”(Beah, p.133). Undoubtedly, this is not normal behavior for a 15-year old and when he displays this conduct, it can be unquestionably said that Ishmael has lost all sense of innocence and emotion. In this section of his story, Ishmael is threatening to kill boys his own age, which shows how deviated he has become from his original character and sense. Both of these examples verify that Ishmael Beah in nowhere near the innocent, rap-enthusiast and family loving boy he once was. The child that was Ishmael Beah is now dead, and in his place stands a cold-hearted

”At first she just listened to me, and then gradually started asking questions to make me talk about the lives I had lived….‘None of these things are your fault,’ she would always say…I heard that phrase from every staff member--and frankly I had always hated it--I began that day to believe it.(164)” Ishmael Beah was a 12-year-old boy living in Sierra Leone at the beginning of the book. Sierra Leone was having a war which concluded too many people dying, and running trying to survive. Ishmael Beah joined the war from being 13 years old to 15 years old, he was drugged to have more energy and brainwashed to have the mindset to kill. Ishmael Beah uses characterization in order to show how Ishmael struggles to change from a child trying to survive, to a drugged ruthless soldier who must recover in rehabilitation.

There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of these child soldiers  , Ishmael Beah is a child who lived most of his childhood in the war   . He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words according to  http://www.alongwaygone.com/index.html and his memoir “A Long Way Gone”. The war had made ishmael have perseverance  in the long run , inference that he was brainwashed by the war and that ishmael was a very hopeful child always wishing for better days.

Ishmael Beah is described as a pre-teen, with a love of rap and hip-hop music. He finishes as a drug-addicted killing machine, out avenging the death of his entire family. Before being rescued by a United Nations Program, and eventually fleeing to New York for rehabilitation, it is a tragic and harrowing tale that gives substance to the term ‘Boy Soldier’, that isn’t really understood in most cases. Ishmael gives a gentle portrayal of his life, before the war reached his small village and forever changed his life. Abruptly he becomes fugitive fleeing for his life and eventually into a corrupted teen.

The child soldier Ishmael Beah once said, “These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.” This represented what Ishmael had to go through during the war. The Sierra Leone war began in 1991. This war was fought by the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) and the National Sierra Leone Army Force. As a consequence, 10,000 child soldiers were recruited, along with them there Ishmael Beah. Beah was only 13 years old when he was forced to become a child soldier by the rebels. In addition, rebel superiors brainwashed Ishmael, along with the rest of the recruited kids by inducing them into drugs such as marijuana, brown-brown and amphetamines. Consequently, a lot of problems were

Child soldiers being used around the world related to interventionism which is a policy of non-defensive activity undertaken by a national, state, or political jurisdiction to manipulate an economy or society. This is the case because nations liek the United States are aware of what is going on and are trying to stop nations from recruiting child soldiers. People around globe are trying to stop this from happening since they understand that thesekids arebeing turned into ruthless, emotionless, and dangerous individiuals as opposed to growing and learning as they should.

Bang! Bang! “At that instant several gunshots, which sounded like thunder striking the tin-roofed houses, took over town. The sound of guns was so terrifying it confused everyone” (Beah 23). In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys his amazing journey through war and hardship as a child soldier. Sierra Leone--a country on the western coast of Africa--was embroiled in a bloody civil war in the 1990’s. Battles multiplied as bloodshed abounded and as a child, Ishmael Beah was forced to survive, find food, and face unimaginable dangers. Running from the battle front was also a routine ordeal. At age 13 Beah was captured by the military and brainwashed into using guns and drugs. As a child soldier, he perpetrated and witnessed a great deal of violence. At 15 he was rescued and taken to a rehabilitation center. With time and continual treatment, Beah was able to recover, to some extent, and reconnect with his Uncle Tommy, who adopted him. He was later chosen to speak to the United Nations in New York City about his experiences as a child soldier. When he returned to Sierra Leone, war broke out throughout the city where he lived, causing many deaths including his Uncle Tommy. Eventually Beah escaped Sierra Leone and managed to reach New York City, where he began a new life. Through the book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys a central theme of having to survive, at a young age, through the hardships of war with the use of imagery.

Ishmael Beah was at the age of thirteen when his childhood and innocence was taken from him. For example, Beah says “My childhood had gone without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen”(30). It happened so quickly. He was frantic with worry. Beah was forced to join the Sierra Leone military. It was not until later he himself started to believe he has lost his innocence. At this young age he was killing the rebels that traumatized him purely to seek revenge and to survive. His hate for the rebels was very strong, “Whenever I looked at the rebels during raids, I got angrier, because they looked like the rebels who played cards in the ruins of the village where I had lost my family. So when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many

First off, child soldiers are often forced to be recruited. “Often they are abducted at school, on the streets or at home.” ("From Cradle to War." Amnesty International. Amnesty International USA, Web. 3 May 2016.) Almost all child soldiers are forced to do things as a soldier that they wouldn’t actually do, such as hurt or kill others. So although some child soldiers want to hurt or kill, most don’t want to. So obviously, most child soldiers are forced to do bad things that they don’t want to do, and wouldn’t do if they hadn’t become a soldier.

This memoir about a boy soldier was very condescending. This was a true story for the author, Ishmael Beah and his life-changing events that occurred in his past. Ishamel Beah was a twelve year old African boy who lived in Sierra Leone Africa who fled attacking rebels due to a civil war in his country, who wandered into different villages trying to avoid the violence that seemed almost inevitable. He sauntered along with his brother and friends who scraped by day-by-day scavenging for food and struggled for survival. In the fifth chapter of the book, Beah describes the struggles he went through by saying, “…our joints weakened and ached” (p. 30). After days of traveling, Beah was eventually taken by the group of rebels and became one of

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to be in the center of a war as an adolescent or how the people who experienced war feel after it all ends? Well, Ishmael Beah is an activist and writer, but also was a child soldier in a war in Sierra Leone. He didn't have a choice other than to join the army if he wanted to survive. Due to the war in Sierra Leone, Beah faced many hardships that impacted his life in a negative way.

Ishmael Beah was a child of war in Sierra Leone. His memoir retells his experiences being in the Sierra Leone army. At just twelve years old, Ishmael Beah’s homeland was infested with Foday Sankoh’s brutal army, who would stop at nothing to take control of Sierra Leone’s diamond mines. Beah then comes to explain his experience as a soldier and his killing spree. Although some may argue that his experiences are too graphic, William Boyd hints that readers should read Beah’s memoir.

The novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is about Ishmael’s life in Sierra Leone. Would you want to be one of the 300,000 soldiers today participating in current war related events? This is what Ishmael had to do on a daily bases. A change in plans relocated Beah and his older brother, along with his two friends to practice for a contest in a town verily close by. Fortunately for Beah it was a day before the Revolutionary United Front attacked his home in Mogbwemo. Being a child soldier negatively affected Ishmael Beah by making him emotionally unstable, he lost his whole entire family, and he was forced to kill anybody who the RUF requested.

Wouldn’t everyone want to defend their country of attacks by rebel soldiers? A far too young boy has seen the world at its worst in Ishmael Beah’s autobiography, A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Ishmael tells his tale when war hits Sierra Leone, and he becomes a killing machine, overcomes his mournful past, and rediscovers who he is. Literary themes used to show the violence include, the theme of hope, irony, and imagery.

When I was younger my parents used to make me do work and chores around the house. I used to think that it was child labor or something like using me as some sort of soldier, and therefore I thought that should be illegal. But now I know better. That wasn’t anything that I thought it was. But there does exist child soldiers, and the practice of using child soldiers is wrong, unjust and immoral. Using child soldiers is immoral. This is true because it poisons the hearts of young children and it is unfair towards the children. Some may say that using child soldiers is good because it is a good military strategy. But this is wrong because it is immoral.