In the memoir A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, Beah writes about his childhood to teen years being an unwilling child soldier in Sierra Leone and living through times of great tragedy and war. Ishmael was born in Sierra Leone in 1980 and he moved to the United States in 1998 where he finished high school at the United Nations International School in New York. Ishmael went to Oberlin College. He is also a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Watch Rights Division Advisory Committee. He has spoken in front of the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO), and many other NGO panels on how children are affected by war. Beah is the head of the Ishmael Beah Foundation, this …show more content…
This memoir was written to anyone who can truly handle sadness, misery, and people who wanted to be educated about other cultures. Also, the purpose of this memoir was to educate people about the troubled childhood and teen years that he went through, but also to educate people on how war and great tragedy really affects children as well. Before reading this book, I had never heard or seen anything about the war in Sierra Leone and I think that was one of the biggest motivators for Ishmael Beah because he realized that not very many people knew there was a war and he wanted to inform more people about what really went on. Ishmael uses a lot of persuasive techniques like kairos, ethos, logos, and pathos to be able to educate people on …show more content…
This creates a sense of credibility to persuade the audience through his early life experiences. Ethos is used a lot throughout the book because this is his life experiences and his early childhood. Ishmael Beah uses the word, “I,”a lot throughout the book since all of this is coming from him and not anyone else. Right off the bat we can see, “The only wars I knew were of those that I had read about in books or seen in movies such as Rambo: First Blood, and the one in neighboring Liberia that I had heard on the BBC news,” (Beah 1). Since this book is written from a first person perspective it really helps out ethos because all of this information is coming straight from the source. There is not a more credible source to listen to on this because no one else has experienced exactly what Ishmael has experienced in his own
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is the true story of Ishmael Beah’s, the author and narrator, experience leading into and eventually becoming a child soldier in Sierra Leone’s military during the Sierra Leonean Civil War. The story begins with Beah, then a twelve year old child, leaving his home village of Mattru Jong to attend a talent show where he and other boys, including his brother Junior, would hip-hop dance to their favorite music genre, rap. On his way he encounters his grandmother’s village where she convinces the boys to stay the night, in the morning he is stunned to learn that Mattru Jong was attacked by the Royal United Front (RUF) and that the people who were in the village were now dead or refugees. After this, Ishmael
The impact of war can have very harmful effects on people, especially children. In “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah, he explains the war of Sierra Leone from his point of view. The tragedy of losing his family, becoming a boy soldier, and the effects of war is said throughout the book, making it an interesting story to read. But, while Ishmael explains what he went through, it is hidden that other people were affected by the actions he took. Although Ishmael did play a victimizer, he was also a victim at the same time.
Later on in the memoir, they named Ishmael the “killing machine” because he was so into violence and killing. The bad group he was with brainwashed him about his family and loved ones. He became addicted to cocaine, marijuana and brown brown which give him courage to fight and kill people without knowing it is wrong. Ishmael stayed with this bad group for a while; but later on his lieutenant gives Ishmael to the UNICEF.
When Beah lost the tapes he and the other boys felt their childhood and innocence being taken away in just a few seconds. The tape’s presence in his life was very strong since they were given to him by his brother Junior. Ishameal used the tape's presence to escape from the reality of what was going on including the war, seeing the bodies, nightmares, headaches, and hopelessness he
A Long Way Gone is an interesting, self-oriented book on the Sierra Leone Civil War because of the author’s intentions and credibility in writing, biases, and the lessons it taught. Ishmael Beah has made strong points in A Long Way Gone about his contentions of writing. Ishmael Beah wrote this memoir to inform people about the terrors of war and how the world knew little about the war while the innocent civilians suffered great
This shows the heinous acts of violence that Ishmael was forced to commit as a boy soldier during the war. On the other hand, music can symbolize hope and healing for Ishmael. “I had not slept well for months now, and so far I had been able to avoid my nightmares by busying myself day and night with listening to and writing the lyrics of Bob Marley’s songs,” (Beah). Overall, he expresses how fear, pain, and hope dominated all aspects of his existence in his writings. His experiences serve as a reminder of the devastating impact on Sierra Leone and
A Long Way Gone is Ishmael Beah’s memoir. It retracts all of the tragic events Ishmeal endured while the Sierra Leone civil war occurred. Ishmael was a child who lived an ordinary life until rebels infiltrated his village which left him and others with no choice, but to flee. He was then forced to become a child soldier. This book shows the physical and mental torture Beah had to go through while has was a child soldier.
War is a haunting time that affects all humans in one way or another at some point in their lives, and this is explicitly shown in Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone. This book was written from the point of view of Ishmael himself, whose life experiences are almost unimaginably daunting, telling his story as a child soldier in the Sierra Leone Civil War. The whole candor of the story is surprising, as Beah goes into much detail about some of the horrible things he did whilst fighting, and how this has affected him in his adolescence and adulthood. His purpose for writing is not very clear, as he published it a number of years after the war had already ended officially, which is understandable given the things he went through, which leads
In the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, the importance of family is a very big topic. Ishmael Beah writes so much about family because during his childhood and during his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, he had many different families. Each of these families that he belonged to had something special about them and offered him something different that also proved to be necessary for him at the time. During his time in Sierra Leone, Beah was part of his many families. His families were: his own family, a group of seven boys that he traveled with, his small squad in the military, Esther from the Benin Home where he was being rehabilitated, his uncle Tommy’s family, and Laura, his mother in the United States.
Ishmael is continuing to teach about the Sierra Leone civil war and how it can severely negatively impact children and communities. This story is a good reminder of why we should protect the youth, and shows the importance of mental
Throughout the book, A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, violence is a predominant theme. Ishmael is a witness to violence at the early age of twelve when the civil war reaches his village in Sierra Leone. The death of his family, the loss of his childhood/ innocence and his transformation into a killer were all direct results of the violence due to the war. The rebel forces killed Ishmael’s mother, father, brother and grandparents during the war.
Not experiencing war is a luxury many people unfortunately do not get; however, Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone, lives and survives the war, though not without heartache. With war there is always fear, death, and hell. Ishmael Beah proves war is hell through the killing of civilians, the distrust, and the after effects of the war. Ishmael proves war is hell through the killing of civilians. Many innocent bystanders of the war are forced out of their homes, made to run for their lives.
People should read it because not only is it informative but relatable in some aspects. The theme of family and love universal, anyone can relate to it. Everybody has somebody that they continue to fight for, someone who is their everything and they’ll do anything for because that’s how much they love them. Ishmael’s story explores that, how his family kept him going. His story also informs those who are less knowledgeable in the history of Sierra Leone.
(Conclusion) Ishmael Beah narrated his personal experience from an honest point of view. By doing so, he enabled the reader to understand everything he chose to explain head on, with no barriers. The reader was able to know what Beah went through, in his own words. “I began to cry quietly and all of a sudden felt dizzy,” (Beah 34). The readers were able to understand how he felt in certain situations.