Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, summarizes his experiences as a child soldier. He supports this by using descriptive word choice, which creates this mostly dark tone throughout the book. His purpose was to assert that being involved with the war as a child was difficult, and that children can lose their innocence from the war, in order to get the readers to see the war from a child’s point of view. He establishes a that dark tone with his readers of the book, with people of all ages. In the first part of A Long Way Gone, his choice of words was descriptive, but in a negative way, about the war. This was when he was first being involved with the war. He mentions, “The first two weeks were extremely painful. I suffered from back pains and muscle aches. Worst of all, the flesh on the palms of my hands were peeled, swollen, and blistered,” (Beah 42), and, “I had seen heads cut off by machetes, smashed by cement bricks, and rivers filled with so much blood that the water had ceased flowing,” (50). Both of these are detailed and filled with imagery that allows the reader to visualize what he himself was actually seeing as a child. Also, this book

When he became a child soldier, things started to change. His thought towards the war changed from running away from it, to being as involved in it as he possibly could. He states, “Killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone,” (126). This shows that he did not mind killing anyone; that he may have even enjoyed it. By going from dreading the war to enjoying it, the tone changed to (need word). At his speech at the UN Conference, he stated, “I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child,” (199). He claims that by being a soldier, his childhood was lost, and since he is not a soldier anymore, he has gotten his childhood back. This goes back to how his words has created his argument, and ties back around to how his innocence was lost during this