ipl-logo

A Long Way Gone Essay: A Biography Of Ishmael Baah

1011 Words5 Pages

Rationale: In this essay I will be writing a biography about Ishmael Baeh a child soldier from Sierra Leone that wrote the book ‘A long way gone.’ I have chosen a biography because we were reading this book in class for a very long time and that’s how I got interested in the life of Ishmael. In my essay I have tried to get on a personal level with Ishmael which makes the essay more interesting. I’ve done this by writing in a lot of detail. In my essay I also talked about the child soldiers that are active now, because of the main topic in the book ‘A long way gone.’ This essay is aimed at people that read on of the books of Ishmael or are willing to read a book of him, with this essay they will understand the writings of him better because they know more about his personal life. The challenges I got during this essay was the research about Ishmael because there wasn’t much information available of him from after he left Sierra Leone. I solved these problems by searching for newspaper …show more content…

More and more of these are armed conflicts, you would think that this would be a reason to have only experienced shooters in these conflicts. Nothing is less true, every day children are used to fight for either the government or the armed forces which are fighting the government. But what actually does make a child a child soldier?, UNICEF defines a child soldier as “any child- boy or girl under the age of 18 which is part of an armed force.” Today there are thousands of child soldiers around the world. In these conflicts they are not only as a soldier but they are also used as suicide bombers for religion causes, spies, lookout and many more tasks where children are

Show More
Related

  • Book Report On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    472 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Book Report On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    579 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ishmael Beah has experienced extreme hardships ever since he was a little boy. Growing up in Sierra Leone during war causes Ishmael’s life to revolve around such. In the nonfiction book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldiers, Ishmael Beah shares personal accounts of what it was like growing up in a period of violence and separation. Ishmael and his family live in a small village called Mattru Jong. When Ishmael is twelve-years-old, his village is attacked by rebels.

    Read More

  • Essay On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    844 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah Character Analysis

    634 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many times, others view unknown situations or topics as “cool”. Many times, they fail to realize the hardships others face. In “A Long Way Gone”, Beah’s friends had thought his experiences were cool but they would not feel the same way if they had read the memoir and understood the emotions and situations he had faced. Ishmael Beah’s memoir goes on to explain all the reasons why his experiences were not nearly cool.

    Read More

  • Examples Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    682 Words  | 3 Pages

    A Long Way Gone alone can be sufficient enough to show just what writing can do, and how much it can do so. By simply writing about his story, Ishmael thoroughly explained what horrors occurred during the Civil War in Sierra Leone and what it takes to recover these lost memories. He helped his readers gain a better understanding on topics, like child soldiers, that most remain naïve to; much like teachers do to their students, but more specifically, Social Studies and English teachers. During my first year in AMVC, I was just a little kid who was very inexperienced with paragraph writing and the supposed “flow” of an essay. But through my teachers, I was able to break free of my naïve bubble to learn more about the art of paragraph writing; and just how significant its effect can be when used

    Read More

  • A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    1513 Words  | 7 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Ishmael Beah Innocence

    660 Words  | 3 Pages

    In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Beah is an adolescent whose innocence is stripped away at the hands of war. At the age of 13, Beah is forced to fight in the war in order to survive, or give up his battle and die. As a result, Beah ultimately decides to join the war. The harsh violence that Beah is exposed to strips him of his innocence and leaves him helpless and alone with his mind keeping him awake at night trying to unsee the cruelness he has been exposed to. Beah utilizes flashbacks, symbolism, and nature motifs in order to address the loss of his innocence throughout the novel.

    Read More

  • Ww1 Child Soldiers

    857 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the world today, there is more than 25 countries who still actively use children in warfare. Child soldiers are human beings under the age of 18 who participate in military actions. They are evidently cheaper to maintain and to train than adult soldiers. They are also more loyal and obedient because the young respect their elders. It has been noted that estimately, 300 thousand children were recruited to fight and perform in war (Child Soldiers.)

    Read More

  • A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    1261 Words  | 6 Pages

    Loss, anger, violence “I imagined capturing several rebels at once, locking them inside a house, sprinkling gasoline on it, and tossing a match” (Beah 113). In Sierra Leone’s civil war, families were torn apart, entire generations lost, these events caused strife in the hearts of the survivors, who searched for revenge. In the memoir A Long Way Gone, a young boy named Ishmael Beah, has his life turned inside out as he tries to survive the civil war in his country. In the country Sierra Leone, Ismael Beah has decided to travel to a nearby town to perform in a talent show when he gets news of a rebel attack on his home. His brother Junior, friends Gibrilla, Talloi, Khalilou and Kaloko and him try to get back, but it is too dangerous to go back

    Read More

  • The Theme Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    744 Words  | 3 Pages

    Child soldiers have been a major issue in countries all over the world for a very long time. For example, Afghanistan is recruiting children to become a part of the Taliban, one of the largest terrorist groups in the country. A theme presented by Ishmael Beah in the book A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier is that when all is lost, there is always hope. He went through brutal drugs and a dark childhood while he was in a civil war but he still was able to push through it and find happiness.

    Read More

  • Should Child Soldiers Be Prosecuted For Their Crimes Essay

    868 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many young children under aged have been taken in by the government. They are being held captive tell they are drugged enough and brainwashed to go out and kill or to be killed. They are forced to train to kill under the influence of drugs and they are hardly aware of what they or doing. Child soldiers should be given amnesty because of the absents of their minds and them not being able to process what they are doing. These children are often seen as targets because they are under aged and not able to take responsibility for their actions so they are targeted to be able to kill without punishment.

    Read More

  • A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah Character Analysis

    657 Words  | 3 Pages

    What is the meaning of adversity? Adversity is the difficulties, misfortunes, and sometimes even trials one must face in order to jump over an obstacle. WWll, holocaust, Racism are all adversities that pertain to individuals and events in the past and the present. One of the events that happened was in Sierra Leone and it was a Civil war between different African tribes. This event is explained through the eyes of the main character in the book “A Long Way Gone”, and his name is Ishmael Beah.

    Read More

  • Ishmael Beah's Memories

    775 Words  | 4 Pages

    Memories “Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose”(Arnold). In the book a long way gone a boy named Ishmael beah tells his story. In this novel Ishmael’s village is eventually raided and he becomes on his own. Through being on his own he thinks of the past and memories of a better life. These memories that he thinks of can hinder him and help him along the way through his journey.

    Read More

  • Reflection On A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

    498 Words  | 2 Pages

    The way Beah explained what happened to him, he did it in a sad way. My response to the writer is that I feel sorry for him. I cannot relate to him in any way since I have never been exposed to war and even been a soldier fighting in it. He was strong through the hardest part of his life; the actual war itself, rehabilitation, and ultimately escaping Freetown, Sierra Leone to eventually fly over to New York and start a new life. Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, replays a part of Beah’s life that will always be very vivid to him.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Child Soldiers

    1422 Words  | 6 Pages

    Assignment page Video Where many children all over the world merrily and freely live under the protection of the law, for others, this is a distant reality, they live in a world where they’re battling poverty, stripped of their childhood and basic human rights are expunged, they’re the innocent victims of conflict, and war is made to seem their one and only duty, not to mention that these are children no more than 10 years of age. They are put into a situation where it’s to kill or be killed. The United Nations defines a child soldier as, “Any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.” Since the past 15 years, child soldiers are being used in almost every region of the world. Unlike most children, who go to school, they’re abducted from their families and forced into becoming a child soldier, where living conditions are beyond imaginable.

    Read More

More about A Long Way Gone Essay: A Biography Of Ishmael Baah

Open Document