A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Eddie Salcedo Mr. Stone December 5, 2012 7th period A Long Way Until The End of This Essay The author of A Long Way Gone argues against boy soldiers but also against the loss of innocence. Beah’s parents are burned alive by the rebels; this is the first step towards his animosity towards them. In his story he talks about snorting brown brown, shooting men and how he was slowly corrupted by the men around him, turning him into a machine. It tells the story of a world as horrendous as any

This was an important scene because this is where Ishmael really becomes more of an animal living for survival rather than a boy of humanity. It leads him to become more of a robot, brainwashed by war. This leads into the making of the horrible decisions to come. This scene relates to the rest of the book since it’s the first act of truly transforming into a soldier and how it affected him as it is the baseline of all the actions yet to come. Though it is not an extensive scene it significantly

“I have been rehabilitated now, so don’t be afraid of me. I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child” (Beah 199). Ishmael Beah had a long road to rehabilitate but he was able to rehabilitate because he had vital forces shaping him. In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, a long way gone, Ishmael was a child soldier in Sierra Leone. He wrote a memoir sharing his experiences of being a child soldier and of him rehabilitation. During 1991 to 2002 there was a vicious civil war going on in the western African country

sophistication. He is a good man and his looks show it. Ishmael is a kind man, working for his fellow child soldiers. He is someone I look up to. He is a former child soldier who was forced to do unspeakable acts even though at heart he is a fairly gentle person. He is a lover of music and often memorized songs and used to sing and rap them with his friends. He is a strong person who has gone through hell and back, and yet he is still able to smile and forgive himself for what he’s done.

A Long Way Gone written by Ishmael Beah and published by Sarah Crichton Books in 2007 is a nonfiction account of Ishmael Beah’s experiences as a boy during the Sierra Leone Civil War. Sierra Leone is a under developed country in west Africa neighboring the countries Guinea and Liberia. The year of 1991 saw the rise of the Revolutionary United Front against Sierra Leone’s government. Known as the rebels, the RUF’s goal was to “rid the country of the corrupt APC government” (Beah 222), thus sparking

innocence during the revolution and how she goes through her life. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie is going through the Holocaust with his father and he witnesses many major and scarring events. In A Long Way Gone: Memoir of A Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, the story is about Ishmael and his life as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. These individuals all lose their innocence at a very young age but it shapes them to be better people later on in their lives. Elie loses his innocence in a tough time for not just

Memoir Essay 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

they tend to experience severe mental challenges including PTSD, and many other symptoms. In most cases such as war and the holocaust “the trauma quite obviously, did not end at liberation” (Bettelheim). Through the use of frightful imagery, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, and Night by Elie Wiesel, express the demand to become impervious to human emotion in order to survive barbaric and savage events. The holocaust and the war in Sierra Leone had death rates from 70 thousand -6 million, all of which

The two works that are related to my thematic statement are A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, and the song Ivy by Frank Ocean. A Long Way Gone reflects the theme of unfamiliarity in life because Ishmael Beah’s life is uprooted whenever the rebel soldiers come and attack his village in Sierra Leone. In all of the chaos, Ishmael ends up losing his family, forcing him to have to survive on his own, until he comes across a group of boys he knows. My pop culture context, Ivy by Frank Ocean is a soft

from being proven not guilty to a lack of knowledge or understanding. Although the protagonist of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, has seemingly lost his innocence to the war, he has remained innocent in the eyes of both morality and the constitution of his country throughout his memoir. Beah’s memoir lays out his life in Sierra Leone, his life during the war before his was a soldier, while he was a soldier, and his rehabilitation. It explains what horrors he had to endure and how he as a child understood