A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Child soldiers are any children under the age of 18 who are recruited by a state or non-state armed group and used as fighters, cooks, suicide bombers, human shields, messengers, spies, or for sexual purposes. In his literary work, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah uses symbols to underscore his central theme of oppression and/or freedom. Symbols in his work that underscore these themes are the cassette tape, the moon and the AK 47’s. The cassette tape is symbolic of freedom

respond to these passages. Why do you think they are important? How do they help the author create his purpose? 1.“‘We must strive to be like the moon.’ An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often to people who walked past his house on their way to the river to fetch water, to hunt, to tap palm wine; and to their farms. I remember asking my grandmother what the old man meant. She explained that the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. She

Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone and Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus, both have an important war stories to tell to our generations. In Maus, we see a family portrait complicated by the legacy of the Holocaust, the bond of families are tested between Vladek, the survivor of the Holocaust and his son Artie, who is ultimately affected by the Holocaust as it reverberate through future generation. A Long Way Gone is a memoir of Ishmael Beah, afflicted by and forced to participate in the

expression, the child’s best interest, and violence. This essay discusses two books, which examine these rights and the ways they are influenced. Survival and Development is a right given in the Convention of the Rights of the Child. To Ishmael in A Long Way Gone, this played a large role in his struggle during the war. When he and his friends are running from village to village, the boys find themselves hungry and without food. When they try to get food some villages, they are sometimes unsuccessful and

A Long Way Gone Formal Essay When most people of think of war, they generally think of the glorified aspects. Love and violence. Or perhaps their minds are drawn to an image of a soldier’s homecoming: A father embracing his son, crying tears of joy, all while the solider relays his experiences of the war among celebratory decorations. He is now considered a hero. But what difficulties has he faced to get there? This is the side of war that many of us don’t recognize. In the memoir, A Long Way Gone

child soldiers, participating in over 30 different conflicts worldwide. Of these 300,000, 120,000 are serving in different countries in Africa. One of the countries where this issue has been extremely prevalent is Sierra Leone, where child soldiers made up a significant part of the armed forces during its 11-year civil war, with 10,000 out of about 50,000 soldiers being children. Accounts of child soldiers in Sierra Leone have been made, with both the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

War is replete with death and dismemberment; but victimization is when the horrors of war are inflicted upon the innocent. The victims of war feel a sense of terror when the harsh realities completely alter their way of life. The people that are indiscriminately thrust into war due to unjust circumstances are considered victims. In the article, "Children - the ultimate victims of war" Graca Machel states that, "War violates every right of a child - the right to life, the right to be with family 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

A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah 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. The book is based on actual events and is expressed through a personal point of view. Ishmael wrote a memoir that tells

lured into being child soldiers from the age of eight.” (Sir Roger Moore). The novel, A Long Way Gone, is about a child soldier, losing his humanity fighting in the war being picked up by the government. Many symbols are used to juxtapose several violent images during his childhood. Beah uses symbols including his AK-47 (gun), the moon, and the cassette tapes to show the central themes of oppression and freedom. In his literary work, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah uses